Cashpoint Machines: Security

Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In so doing, I declare an interest, having had a credit card stolen and used 12 times in a cash machine.
	The Question was as follows:
	To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will introduce legislation to require banks to improve security around their cashpoint machines.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, we have worked extensively in partnership with banks, police, local government and crime and disorder reduction partnerships to reduce vulnerability around cashpoint machines, but we have no plans for new legislation.

Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that rather disappointing reply. Is she aware that this form of crime rose by 85 per cent last year? If criminals keep on getting away with crimes, they will keep on committing them. In my case, no CCTV cameras were working, including in Peterborough and Heathrow, as well as North Yorkshire.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Baroness has had this troubling incident happen to her, but I assure her that this issue is being looked at creatively. CCTV is one of the measures used to try to make things safer. A number of industry initiatives are now in place, or are being developed, to counter all types of cash machine fraud. Those initiatives include installing CCTV cameras both in and around machines to deter fraudulent activity. Where the police believe that a particular cash machine might benefit from CCTV, then it is for them to raise the matter with the bank or with the crime and disorder reduction partnership. Police local authority liaison officers are working with local authorities, and there is now a better concordat in relation to those matters.

Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, is the Minister aware that in many South American countries the hole in the wall is not a hole in the wall but a small inset cubicle within the bank wall, which only one person can enter at a time? If a CCTV camera were used in conjunction with that, it would be much easier to identify the people. One of the common scams is to insert an artificial strip in the machine, and at least it would then be possible to see who was doing it. Would it not be in the interest of the banks to consider implementing these ideas?

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, the noble Baroness makes an important point. The intelligence of how others around the world have dealt with this problem is important, and banks are looking at it. There is an issue in relation to how we can make it better. Local authorities and the police are working together on a defensible space, which involves making a metre squared box on the floor outside the cashpoint machine. CCTV footage of users suggests that in the majority of cases the marked space was respected by those waiting their turn to use the machine. That has been piloted, and it appears to have had a good effect. In fact, research on characteristics of street crime found that one in four street crime offences were geographically connected to cash machines. These sorts of issues are being trailed and are reducing the level of offending taking place around machines.

Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, although I accept that it is the banks' responsibility to get to grips with this growing problem—and of course they are beginning to charge cardholders to do it—I was disappointed by the Minister's original Answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, to the effect that the Government have no plans to legislate on anything. Even as we speak, magnetic strip reading machines are on sale in London. Why do the Government not at least consider making their sale illegal?

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I know that many in this House think that legislation is the panacea of all ills. I regret to tell the noble Lord that that is not always the case.

Noble Lords: Oh!

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, we are working very hard through the crime and disorder reduction partnerships to find practical, effective ways to reduce crime. I mentioned the pilot study that was undertaken by Greater Manchester police, which showed that creating a defensible space around the cashpoint machine reduced the number of offences committed by 66 per cent. The other actions being taken by the crime and disorder reduction partnership are making our areas much safer. There are important, practical things that we can do, together with the banking industry, the police and the crime and disorder reduction partnerships to address this problem. Legislation is not necessarily the first port of call.

Lord Dubs: My Lords, I wonder whether my noble friend would allow me to ask a related question about bank security, concerning cheque books sent by banks to their customers. Is my noble friend aware that, in my experience, all too frequently they are being intercepted between the bank and the customer? They are then used fraudulently, and there seems to be no security measure adopted by the banks that can safeguard the customer. I declare an interest, in that I am having my cheque books sent to this place, because I do not like them being sent home in case they do not get there.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, fraud is a huge matter, which the banking industry is taking very seriously. The activities to reduce banking fraud have been quite vigorous, and the key to tackling fraud is prevention; the chip and pin system that is now being introduced makes it much more difficult for people to clone cards. As for sending materials through the post, the banks are looking at that.
	There has been additional funding for the City of London police to enable expansion of the economic crime department. The Home Office, in partnership with the financial services sector, helped to establish the dedicated cheque and plastic crime unit, the DCPCU, providing £1.4 million over two years to pilot it. The pilot was a success, and banks estimated their savings at around £65 million. The unit is continuing with full financial backing from the industry. These matters are being taken seriously and are being looked at.

Lord Dholakia: My Lords, the Minister was good enough to cite some good practices adopted by banks. My bank recently sent me photographs of what a machine looks like when it is tampered with. How can such information be passed on to the general public so that there is less likelihood of fraud being committed?

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, as I said, the crime and disorder reduction partnerships are doing a great deal to make sure that information is disseminated. Research has shown that environmental measures can have a significant impact. We published the research on 30 November in a paper called Problem-solving street crime: practical lessons from the Street Crime Initiative. It involved improving lighting and visibility, installing rear-view windows and relocating. We can all do things to try to make crime less likely to occur to ourselves and to keep our property safe. We will continue, through the local criminal justice boards and the crime and disorder reduction partnerships, to make sure that information is properly disseminated to individuals, so that they can take better care of their own property.

Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, who actually owns the cash machines? Are they an extension of the bank? If so, does not the bank have responsibility to make sure that the cash machines are bug-free?

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, they are owned by the banks. As I mentioned, a concordat or agreement was recently signed about a one-stop point for police to contact the banks. All the banks have come together so that, if there is a difficulty in relation to a cash machine, the police can give that information to one source and appropriate measures can be taken in reducing the aberrant effect of the use of that machine. It is the banks' responsibility, but also the responsibility of the police and the local authority. If we go back to the defensible space and say that it has to be marked on the road, the three would have to act together. The crime and disorder reduction partnerships, which we created, are powerful bodies because they bring together all the people across the piece who can look at an area and, we hope, take steps to make sure that crime is properly reduced there.

Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, is the Minister aware that some organised gangs work in this area? I have heard that they are from Romania and Ghana, just to mention two countries.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, regrettably, there are a number of organised criminal gangs. It is our responsibility and the police's responsibility to try to identify them, disrupt their activity and make it more difficult for them to operate in the area. All that is happening, which is why the crime rate has been reduced by 30 per cent during the time that the Government have been in office. The street crime initiative was very successful and reduced crime significantly in the areas in which it operated. We continue to drive that forward. I should reassure noble Lords that we have been considering what further changes might need to be made to fraud legislation; that consideration is continuing also.

Consultants: Cost

Lord Peyton of Yeovil: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What has been the cost to public funds of the advice sought from private sector consultants on the improvement of public services during the past three years to the most convenient date.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, no statistic is held centrally about the cost to public funds of the advice sought from private sector consultants in each year. The Government have put in place an efficiency programme with strong controls on the engagement of external service providers to ensure that procurement of professional services will deliver value for money.

Lord Peyton of Yeovil: How very interesting, my Lords. An efficiency programme is surely overdue, with action taken on it. The question that I want to ask the noble Lord is a very simple one. Why on earth continue to spend such astronomical sums on advice that, of the same quality and at a tenth of the price, ought to be available from the public sector's own resources? I wonder whether the time has not come for the Government generally to remember the opinion expressed by Mark Twain that the first consultant was Satan. I am sure that the noble Lord will recall the advice that Satan tendered to Eve—that she could safely eat of the fruit.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his literary references. Unfortunately, the facts do not bear out his argument. The National Audit Office carried out a survey of the use of private sector consultants in 2000, and found that expenditure was equivalent to 0.17 per cent of total public spending. It is also a fact that use of consultants by the public sector is lower than use of consultants by the private sector; clearly, private sector business finds it worth while to use consultants on occasion. Consultancy rates paid by the public sector are lower than those of the private sector.
	I suppose that I ought to have prefaced my remarks by saying that I ran a market research consultancy company for 30 years and had very valued clients in the public sector.

Lord Hughes of Woodside: My Lords, does my noble friend share my shock and horror at the damning indictment of private consultants from the noble Lord, Lord Peyton of Yeovil?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I am rarely shocked or horrified by anything in this House.

Lord Marlesford: My Lords, I am reminded that the penalty for the bad advice given to Eve was that the consultant was to crawl on his belly for eternity—but that does not always happen in our system. AP Herbert once wrote a letter to the Times, pointing out that the Government were like an elderly hypochondriac—always asking for a second opinion, but never taking it.
	That said, does the Minister at least accept that some of the best and virtually free advice available to the executive is from Parliament, particularly from this House? Given that we now face the major controversy over identity cards, will the Minister agree that there might be a good case for having a Joint Committee of both Houses to consider the matter in detail?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, began with some useful quotations which related to the Question on the Order Paper, but he escaped as fast as he could from the subject under discussion.

Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, when the Freedom of Information Act comes into force at the beginning of the new calendar year, will it be possible for the public to inspect closely the private consultants' advice in many cases to enable the public, including Parliament, to form a view on whether we obtain value for money?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the Question is about expenditure on professional services and I can respond positively to the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, on that score. The Office of Government Commerce encourages departments to make public the details of their expenditure on the use of external professional services. That will become statutory when the Freedom of Information Act comes into force on 1 January. I can go along with the noble Lord to that extent.
	As to the detail of advice that consultants give, I imagine that that will vary according to the type of advice—whether, for example, it is legal, professional or business advice. I do not think that it will be possible to generalise in the way that the noble Lord suggested.

Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, does the Minister agree that, to use the words of a distinguished Prime Minister, consultants have "never had it so good"?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I am not aware of the origin of that quote. Some consultants have it good if they give good advice. If they do not give good advice, then, presumably, they do not have it so good.

Lord Maginnis of Drumglass: My Lords, is it not the case that the noble Lord, Lord Peyton of Yeovil, has given good advice to the Government in that there should be greater discrimination in the extent to which consultants are engaged by departments? Can the Minister say whether some consultation documents coming from within departments are not quite as ridiculous and useless as those coming from paid consultants? I refer to one document, for example, where the department said that 3,000 young people and children were consulted—some as young as three years old.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I agree with the first part of the noble Lord's question. The view of the Office of Government Commerce, which is charged with such matters, is that there should be very severe scrutiny of the use of external professional services, because, clearly, one should use those services only when it is less expensive than providing the advice internally. That is why the procurement work of the Office of Government Commerce concentrates heavily on value for money from external professional services. I do not know that I can comment on the noble Lord's example of internal consultation.

Lord Newby: My Lords, the Government have already accepted that deferring expenditure on IT projects counts as an efficiency saving, because it avoids subsequent cost overruns. Does the same principle apply to IT consultants?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, that is a "Have you stopped beating your wife?" question. There is no assumption that not using IT consultants produces efficiency savings, although if you read the public press you would think otherwise.

Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, the Minister says that he cannot give figures for the cost to the Government of private consultants. Has he read the Management Consultancies Association's report of April, which said that public sector work has now reached £1.3 billion, accounts for 22 per cent of its members' incomes and that central government is the largest single market for consultants? Given that some 5,000 people a year die from hospital-acquired infections and consultants have been used to try to drive that figure down, does the Minister think that this is really value for money?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the Management Consultancies Association represents only one part of the range of professional service advisers who give advice to the Government. Earlier, I gave the example of legal advice, but the Management Consultancies Association does not cover that. It does not cover market research services or a range of other areas. Therefore, the association's figures would not have enabled me to give a more positive answer to the original Question put by the noble Lord, Lord Peyton.

Gypsies and Irish Travellers: Census Category

Baroness Whitaker: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	Whether they intend to include a new category for Gypsies and Irish Travellers in the next census.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, information on Gypsies and Irish Travellers in England and Wales could be collected in the census through the responses to an ethnicity question. The ethnicity question asked in the 2001 census allowed a write-in response to enable respondents to describe their identity or ethnic origin in whichever way they chose. The question will be reviewed as part of the general preparations for the 2011 census. The Office for National Statistics will begin its formal external user consultation on the 2011 census topics with the production of a consultation document, which will be published in spring next year.

Baroness Whitaker: My Lords, with apologies for my failing voice, I thank my noble friend for that moderately encouraging Answer. But does he agree that, bearing in mind that the Gypsies and Irish Travellers have perhaps one of the worst maternal mortality rates of any ethnic minority in the UK, and that the children of Irish Travellers, at least recently, had 10 times the mortality rate of the settled population, any census breakdown figures should also cover the health categories shown in the recent Department of Health report, The Health Status of Gypsies and Travellers in England?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I am aware of the problem with the health of Gypsies and Irish Travellers to which the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, refers; a publication which is not from, but published by, the Department of Health shows that she is right on that point. However, the issue of whether a decennial census can be used, or should be used, to pursue issues of ill health is quite another point. I should have thought that the census was rather a blunt instrument for that purpose, even if it were possible to include the ethnicity of Gypsies and Irish Travellers on the census as a pre-coded item.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, is the Minister aware that although public authorities have a duty to promote equality between different ethnic groups, they tend to ignore groups that are not covered explicitly by the census? For example, 157 local authorities had homeless Gypsies in their areas as at the 2003 count by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, yet 70 per cent of them ignored Gypsies altogether in formulating their homelessness strategies. Will the Government remind all public authorities of the advice given by the Commission for Racial Equality that they should consciously look for ethnic minorities in their areas that are not explicitly identified in the census?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Yes, my Lords, I think that that is good advice. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is certainly right to say that the existing question in the census is not good at identifying Gypsies or Irish Travellers. As I said in my original Answer, that is why we are looking to consult on this issue in good time for the next census.
	The problem is that, unless there is a pre-code for the group that one wants to identify, people do not write in an answer. In 2001, a pre-code for "Irish" under the ethnic group question produced 691,000 responses, whereas in 1991 the answer had to be written in and only 11,000 people did so. So clearly the census must have an explicit pre-code if it is to serve the purpose that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and I want.

The Earl of Selborne: My Lords, the purpose may be to find out more about those whom we describe as "Gypsies", but does the Minister agree that Romanies and other travelling races sometimes find that term offensive? It is, after all, derived from the misconception that the races originally came from Egypt. If terms such as that are to be used, they must be acceptable to the very people whom one is trying to find out about.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I entirely agree, and this is a very difficult issue. Those who wrote in their ethnic origin in the 2001 census were coded as Gypsy/Romany. A number of others called themselves Travellers; a number called themselves Irish Travellers; and I imagine that quite a number called themselves Roma. One issue that will have to be considered in the consultation is the name that should be used. I certainly agree with the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, that great sensitivities are involved in this.

Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, the noble Lord spoke of a consultation. Will a trial be carried out, as, for example, was the case when I was in charge of the census in 1981 and we asked: where was your father born? It became absolutely clear that people would not answer that question and so it was dropped from the 1981 census. A trial is very important in order to find out exactly what people will and will not answer.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I entirely agree, and certainly all the questions will be piloted, which is my term of trade for a trial, as they have been in the past—both in 1981, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, knows, and more recently in respect of the religious question, which was added in 2001.

Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I express appreciation of the manner in which the Minister has, quite rightly, carefully stuck to the words in the Question. We are dealing with the subject of the census, but I take this opportunity to welcome what I sense to be a sympathetic approach by my noble friend's ministerial colleagues, as evinced during the passage of the recent Housing Bill. My noble friend and many others in this House will remember their experiences as local or county councillors. The question is: how do we deal with this problem which the census might solve? The problem has been going on for some time, and my noble friend would do a service to local authorities and the people concerned if he were able to look sympathetically at the possible outcome.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I am sure that my ministerial colleagues will be grateful for what my noble friend Lord Graham said. Unfortunately, I have been pointing out the difficulty of obtaining from the census effective information which would help in housing policy or, indeed, in the work of local authorities in that area. We must recognise those difficulties and we must continue to try to resolve them.

Baroness Hanham: My Lords, there have recently been a considerable number of reports about Travellers taking up positions on unauthorised sites. However, by definition, Gypsies and Travellers are people who roam and move from one place to another. Can the Minister explain how one can be sure that accurate information about Gypsies and Travellers is obtained in a census, where the census points will be, and how it will be established that the same person is not questioned three or four times because he has moved to different places?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the whole principle on which the census is conducted is that there is a single moment in time—midnight on the day of the census—and a person is counted in the census at that time, wherever he may be. The census points are described geographically so that people cannot be left out because they are not in fixed abodes. That is the way in which the census has been conducted for 200 years and it is the only possible way in which to conduct a census. That deals with the point made by the noble Baroness.

Infant Death Cases: Attorney-General's Review

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I wish to make a Statement on my review of infant death cases.
	On 19 January this year, the Court of Appeal published its judgment allowing the appeal of Angela Cannings against conviction for murder of two of her children. Following that judgment, I did two things. First, I asked the Crown Prosecution Service to review all current cases where a parent or carer was being prosecuted for killing an infant aged under two. The Crown Prosecution Service has done that and has decided not to proceed in three of those cases. Those are the current cases. Secondly, I have, as the House will be aware, established a review of past cases where a parent or carer had been convicted of killing an infant under two in the past 10 years.
	The aim of my review was to identify whether other cases of infant homicide bore the hallmarks described by the Court of Appeal in the Cannings case as making a conviction potentially unsafe. I instructed the reviewing team to identify any cases where there was concern, even if it was not strictly a so-called sudden infant death syndrome case. That identification process involved all CPS areas and the Home Office homicide register.
	A total of 297 cases of past convictions have been identified and reviewed. Of those, in 180 cases I propose to take no further action as I consider that they give no cause for concern. The fact that I do not propose to take any further action on these cases in no way precludes the defence appealing to the Court of Appeal, if it has not already done so, or applying to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).
	In 28 cases, action has been taken as I considered that there was cause for concern in those cases. We have notified our concern to the defence solicitors, notified the CCRC and notified the Court of Appeal. It is now for the defendant to decide whether to take the case to appeal either directly or through the CCRC. The fact that these cases have been referred does not mean that the conviction will automatically be overturned. It means that it will be looked at again by the CCRC, if the defendant so wishes. Either the CCRC or the defendant may make a reference to the Court of Appeal. At that point, it will be for the CPS to decide whether it will resist such an appeal. Of those 28 cases, three are convictions closely analogous to the case of Angela Cannings—that is, sudden infant death cases. In the other 25 cases, there were other concerns about the medical evidence.
	Of the 297 cases reviewed, there are 89 cases which we have identified as shaken baby syndrome cases and which I have decided not to refer at this stage. Although shaken baby syndrome cases differ in a number of respects from sudden infant death syndrome cases, there is a similarity in that there has been a growing medical controversy about the identification of the cause of the injuries.
	Knowledge of shaken baby syndrome will continue to grow over time and I appreciate that any determination that I make on these cases is based on current knowledge. I am aware that the Court of Appeal is to consider four joined cases on shaken baby syndrome in summer 2005 and there is the prospect that it will give general guidance on shaken baby syndrome issues. If that is the case, I shall of course consider very carefully, for these cases, any conclusions the court draws from its considerations. Again, in these, as in all cases, it is open to the defence now to appeal or to refer to the CCRC.
	My report and the accompanying report to me by the Central Review Team, which I established, explain the procedures and processes by which the review has been conducted. I would like to express my gratitude to the review team and to those who provided assistance to it.
	Young and vulnerable children need the protection of the law. Yet if unfair accusations or, worse still, wrongful convictions for the death of a child occur, it increases the tragedy of what is already a devastating event.

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General very much indeed for his Statement on these matters of grave and widespread concern. I have a number of questions arising out of what the noble and learned Lord has just said.
	First, on pending cases into sudden infant death, I understand that the review identified three in which it was decided not to go ahead with the prosecution on the ground that it would not be safe to proceed. Can the noble and learned Lord tell the House how many other pending cases there are?
	Secondly, the scope of the review went back 10 years. That was,
	"both practicable and realisable and should ensure that all persons still in custody were included in the review".
	Can the noble and learned Lord be confident that that period did, in fact, cover all persons who were still in custody?
	Thirdly, I understand from the noble and learned Lord that 279 cases were investigated in the course of the 10 years. The Central Review Team identified 28 which gave,
	"sufficient cause for concern in relation to the medical evidence relied upon at trial so as to warrant further consideration".
	The facts of only three of these cases were similar to those in the case of Angela Cannings; 25 cases concerned what is described as other medical evidence. What is that other medical evidence and what steps is the noble and learned Lord taking with regard to it?
	Fourthly, of the remaining cases, 89 were categorised as shaken baby syndrome. As your Lordships are well aware, there is growing disagreement in the medical profession regarding the nature and pattern of such injuries. What is the current medical evidence that is undermining those 89 prosecutions? What research is being undertaken into the syndrome? Given that the Court of Appeal in the summer of 2005 will consider five of those cases, will the noble and learned Lord take the matter further in the next six months?
	Fifthly, will the noble and learned Lord take into account the views of Angela Cannings herself and announce a public inquiry into similar cases?
	Sixthly, on cases of parental abuse that are heard in the family court—20 times the number of those heard in criminal courts and where the test is on a balance of probabilities rather than beyond reasonable doubt—is the noble and learned Lord aware that, every day, children are being taken from their parents largely on unsupported medical evidence? Does the noble and learned Lord plan to look into this matter, as well as into criminal matters, and into the nature of expert evidence in such cases?
	Finally, following the Angela Cannings case, the NSPCC wants to see the recommendations made by the Independent Review of Coroner Services implemented as a matter of urgency. Does the noble and learned Lord agree?

Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, we on these Benches very much welcome the report and congratulate the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General on the speed with which he set up the inquiry and the thorough methodology behind the Central Review Team which carried out the investigation. We welcome the stress placed by the noble and learned Lord in his report on the effect of unjust convictions, both on the people concerned and on the general public. He echoes the words of Lord Justice Judge in his judgment. It is worth quoting them: Lord Justice Judge concluded his judgment in the Cannings case by saying:
	"In a criminal case, it is simply not enough to be able to establish even a high probability of guilt. Unless we are sure of guilt the dreadful possibility always remains that a mother, already brutally scarred by the unexplained death or deaths of her babies, may find herself in prison for life for killing them when she should not be there at all. In our community, and in any civilised community, that is abhorrent".
	This case is a warning to those who suggest that expert evidence can be reduced to a single expert who simply assists the court. It is very important to realise that, at present, experts on both sides, whether for the prosecution or for the defence, regard themselves as non-partisan. Your Lordships may feel that this case establishes that it is right that a defendant should have her own expert and, if on legal aid, be provided with the necessary funds for that.
	The report of an expert instructed by the defence, or at least the fact that a report has been obtained, will now be disclosed to the prosecution. I hope that the Attorney-General can confirm that the prosecution—the CPS—will follow the guidelines of Lord Justice Judge when he said,
	"if the outcome of the trial depends exclusively or almost exclusively on a serious disagreement between distinguished and reputable experts, it will often be unwise, and therefore unsafe, to proceed".
	I hope that that will be a guiding light in the CPS. When there is a disagreement, it is important that expert evidence on either side should be firmly tested by cross-examination and that the finders of fact, whether magistrates or a jury, should have all the assistance that they can obtain.
	The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, referred to the civil aspect. Of course, on 21 January, the day after the Attorney-General instituted his inquiry into criminal cases, the Solicitor-General, Miss Harriet Harman, announced a care case review into the very important civil aspect of the case that the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, so graphically described, where children had been removed from their mother or from their parents as a result of medical expert opinion that has not been fully tested in the family court and decided on the balance of probabilities. Perhaps the Attorney-General can tell the House the progress of the Solicitor-General's care case review and when we can expect its findings.
	Another important step was instituted. On 6 September last the joint working group, set up by the Royal College of Pathologists and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, produced a report called Sudden Unexpected Death in Infancy. It contained a protocol involving a multi-agency approach to the investigation of cases where it is thought that a death has been caused by one or other of the parents or guardians.
	Has that protocol been adopted generally? I appreciate that it is only three or four months since the report came out. The protocol called for training for CPS lawyers and recommended that no prosecution should be brought without reference to the multi-agency final professional review. Can the Attorney-General tell us whether the training has commenced and whether that principle of referring to the multi-agency final professional review is firmly in the minds of the CPS?

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for their welcome of this report. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, for what he said about the thoroughness of the methodology. It has been a painstaking exercise. The Angela Cannings case really sounded a warning. It seemed important to me not to leave it to chance as to whether cases in which there might be a miscarriage of justice would be picked up by a defendant reading about it in a newspaper and wondering whether his or her case might be affected, but to try to identify all the cases which could be covered.
	It was quite a major process to identify, retrieve, review and then refer the cases. So I am very grateful to the Home Office, the police, the CPS, the Law Society and the CCRC, who were involved. It has produced the results which I have identified.
	I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, that this is a matter of widespread and grave concern. I share that unease. That is why I acted as I did to set up this review. I turn to the noble Lord's questions. He asked about pending cases. Fifteen cases were identified at first and a further five cases were identified by the police, making a total of 20. They were reviewed by the CPS and 14 were found not to be sudden infant death syndrome cases at all. The remainder were considered personally by the DPP and one case by one of the senior officials. Out of those six cases, three were stopped.
	Secondly, the advice to me was—and I accept it—that taking 10 years as the period for convictions would result in all cases where defendants were still in custody being caught within the net. I have no reason to believe that that is not right. Of course it is perfectly possible for anyone who for some reason falls outside that precise net to bring the matter forward, to bring it to me or to take it directly to the CCRC.
	The noble Lord asked about the 28 cases. As he rightly says, three of those are closely analogous to the Angela Cannings case. The other 25 cases, in which there was an issue about medical evidence, are not sudden infant death cases, but cases in which a key issue such as the cause of death or the timing of death was heavily dependent on expert evidence where there was a serious disagreement between distinguished and reputable medical experts. For example, in one case the issue was whether the cause of death was a fall or a blow. It was apparent that there was an injury to the infant's head.
	In some other cases the medical evidence relates to the health or the mental state of the defendant. That can be important, particularly where a plea of guilty has been tendered. I hope that gives enough indication of the sort of cases. I emphasise again that the fact that we have concern does not in any way automatically mean that the convictions will be overturned, but we recognise the concern.
	The noble Lord asked about shaken baby syndrome cases. In the report now available I have attempted to summarise broadly the medical controversy. In short, shaken baby syndrome cases involve clear evidence of physical injury in the sense of typical injuries such as brain damage, often bleeding into the eyes and sometimes fractured ribs. The medical controversy is that the view has been that those injuries only occur as a result of severe, excessive and obviously inappropriate shaking, and sometimes impact as well, of a child. There is a theory—and I think it is fair to say that it is not proven—that lesser force than that, indeed, most recently no force at all, is capable of giving rise to those same injuries. I set out that controversy more in the report.
	I hope that the Court of Appeal, which is in the best position to test these alternative theories, will do that in the course of the cases which will take place next year.
	The noble Lord asked whether I would take account of the views of Angela Cannings. I have met her and will meet her again in the new year. I shall listen very carefully to her appalling experience, which nobody should have to go through. I have no intention to order a public inquiry into her case or others.
	The family courts—the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, asked about the matter as well—are not directly within my ministerial responsibility. The Department for Education and Skills, where the Minister for Children is to be found, issued a circular asking councils with social services responsibility to undertake a review both of all current cases and cases where there was a care order still in force in favour of a local authority.
	Both stages of that review have been completed and the results have been published and placed in the Library of the House. I could give further details of that if noble Lords want me to, but essentially the results of those reviews have already been published. That is the answer to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, who asked about what my right honourable friend the Solicitor-General said.
	The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, asked also about the report into the operation of Coroners' Courts. I am not in a position to give up-to-date information on the Government's response to that report. Again it is outside my ministerial responsibilities. I will ensure that a letter is sent to the noble Lord giving as much information as possible at this stage.
	The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, made the point, with which I entirely agree, that these cases demonstrate the importance of expert evidence—from whichever side it is called—being objective, in order to assist the court in reaching a just verdict. An expert is not there as a hired gun or as an advocate for one cause or another, but in order to help the court to reach a just verdict. I think that there is much force in what the noble Lord says about cases which demonstrate that sometimes if the defence did not have its own expert, certain issues might not be fully ventilated. I take that point.
	The noble Lord asked about the guidelines set down by Lord Justice Judge. There is an important qualification here. Lord Justice Judge in the Cannings case gave his judgment in terms of a particular category of case and not in respect of all cases in which there is a disagreement between experts. In many cases juries are well able to determine disagreements between experts. But he said that in particular categories of cases—where one is at the frontier of medical knowledge and where the case depends entirely on medical evidence—there is a particular danger. I can assure the noble Lord that, certainly in cases of sudden infant death, the CPS is taking account of that guidance. That is why three of the cases were stopped.
	Finally, the Government welcome the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy. Strands of departmental work are taking place at the moment in relation to her recommendations. I am sure that at an appropriate moment we will make sure that the results of those departmental strands, including those by the Crown Prosecution Service, are made known to your Lordships.

Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, is the noble and learned Lord aware that an unfortunate side effect has been the propensity of social workers and some doctors to assume the worst when a child is brought in with an injury? When their child injures itself, many parents are now terrified to take it to the doctor, because they are afraid that they will be accused of having battered the child and that the fact of their child having injured itself will not be believed. In fact, one young couple I know were so frightened to take their child to the doctor that they drove him 200 miles to the mother's father, who, luckily, happened to be a doctor. That will lead to children suffering and possibly dying from injuries needlessly.
	It is also very important that we remember that it is not only the mother—the parents—of a child who has died who suffer appallingly. As the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, said, it is also the other children who, in most such cases, are taken into care and then put up for adoption. Even if the parents are later cleared, those children, having been adopted, can probably never be restored to them.

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, I absolutely agree with the noble Lady that it is extremely important that parents whose child suffers an injury seek medical attention where appropriate. I hope that the review that I have undertaken will give confidence that the law is determined to see that, although children need protection, it is only in cases where there is clear evidence of unlawful conduct that a parent need worry about any form of criminal prosecution. I hope that that is clear.
	I also entirely agree with the noble Lady that, although the loss of a child is a tragedy for the parents, it can deeply affect other members of the family as well. She mentioned siblings, but there are others too—grandparents and other close relatives—who may be devastated and suffer grave loss as a result of such tragedies. So I entirely agree with the noble Baroness about that as well.

Lord Mayhew of Twysden: My Lords, while congratulating the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General on what seems to be his exemplary handling of this matter, may I ask about the 28 cases in which he has told us that cause for concern has been identified so as to warrant further consideration? Will he be able to ensure that in all cases in which the convicted defendant decides to go directly to the Court of Appeal, legal aid will be available? That would seem to be only just because, in the circumstances, no blame for what may have happened can possibly be said to have attached to the defendant.

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord makes a very important point. As he will know, having occupied this position, the Attorney-General does not control the legal aid budget but, if any case is brought to my attention in which it appears that one of those 28 persons wants to go to the Court of Appeal and there is a difficulty about legal aid, I will certainly do my best to make representations to correct the situation, and do so quickly.

Lord Chan: My Lords, in welcoming this report, there are obviously lessons here for the medical profession in particular—for paediatricians and doctors in accident and emergency units. Will the noble and learned Lord issue some advice for doctors arising from his review?

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Lord's question. There are a number of strands of work which both are being and need to be undertaken. There is the question of accreditation of appropriate experts. There is the question of training of appropriate experts. That is partly for the professional bodies that either exist at present or are being set up, such as the council of forensic pathologists, to take into account.
	It is also extremely important that the message is sent out—it is there already but it is so important that it needs to be emphasised—that the purpose of expert evidence, whether from a doctor or any other experienced person, is to assist the court to reach a just verdict. It is important to disclose information that may be counter to one's opinion, to demonstrate the doubts that there may be in relation to the opinion, and at all times to strive to give the court the best help that one can to reach that just verdict. That is perhaps the most important message.

Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I ask the noble and learned Lord to cast his mind forward to the 28 cases, and even the 89 shaken baby cases and the surviving children of the family. What systems will be put in place to decide on the future of such children, should the defendant be acquitted in future? What structures will be put in place to support the family in its reintegration? Will the best interests of the child be paramount and what sort of support will be given to the family for the future, which will clearly be difficult, and to any future children born to that family, following the enormous trauma to the mother?

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, the noble Baroness asks very important questions; I recognise that immediately. She also rightly identifies the key consideration on the civil side, the family side: the best interests of the child should determine the outcome. As for the structure for considering the position in the event that a conviction is overturned, I believe that the existing requirements to review care plans would be appropriate.
	We have already debated in this House the difficulties where, for example, a child has already been adopted and the problem that one then has about unsettling arrangements that have been made for the child. That is very different from a criminal case, but those who are responsible generally for the welfare of families—often local authorities—will need to look sensitively at the case of any such people to consider whether any changes need to be made, what support the family requires and how that can be given.

Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, in how many cases of shaken baby syndrome is alcohol involved? When I was a member of the board of visitors of a young offenders' institution, one young man said to me that when he came back from the pub, the baby was crying and he used to pick it up and shake it. He was very worried about that. I wonder how many similar cases there are involving shaken baby syndrome and alcohol.

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, I cannot answer that precise question, but I regret to say that I must agree with the noble Baroness that there are parents who commit acts of violence against children exacerbated by alcohol. There is no doubt about that, and very sad it is too. We must keep in mind that children need the protection of the law precisely because there will be circumstances, which may include being the worse for wear for drink, that will lead a parent to do something that involves unlawful violence.

Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, I declare an interest as the deputy chairman of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. Does the noble and learned Lord acknowledge the serious difficulty of making assessments in such cases and recognise how carefully the social work profession and doctors have to work towards making decisions? Does he also acknowledge that, although we are concerned about any injustice to parents, there is an equal danger that social workers may become so concerned about the consequences of their actions that they may not take appropriate action to protect children, which is the primary task that we must take forward?

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, I readily acknowledge both points made by the noble Baroness. It is a difficult and heavy responsibility for those who are charged with the welfare of children to weigh up, on the one hand, the risk of making a wrong judgment against a parent and, on the other, ensuring the protection and safety of the child in question. I pay tribute to the high professionalism of those who carry out that difficult job.

Lord Lewis of Newnham: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord took the figure of 10 years for looking into these cases. Is there a significant possibility that a group of people beyond that period will have to live with that accusation, which is very difficult for them to accept? I realise that one can go so far, but 10 years takes a 20 year-old into a 30-year period. There could still be a significant number of people who are accused and basically innocent.

Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, first, as I said in answer to earlier questions, the advice that I received, which I have no reason not to accept entirely, is that 10 years would pick up all those cases where someone was still in custody. One must bear in mind that 10 years in prison is normally the equivalent of a 20-year prison term, which would be a very long term for a case of domestic murder of a child. I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Condon, who knows a lot about the issue, is nodding in agreement. There is no reason to believe that it was not the right figure to take; it had to be practical.
	Secondly, the provision in no way prevents someone who believes that he or she has been wrongly convicted taking the matter to the Court of Appeal, the CCRC or even referring the case to me for possible further consideration. One possible benefit of making the matter known publicly is that someone may see it in the newspapers, and if they harbour the sort of concern to which the noble Lord refers, they can take it up.

Administration and Works Committee

Lord Brabazon of Tara: rose to move, That the first report from the Select Committee (HL Paper 209, Session 2003–04), be agreed to.

Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, the Administration and Works Committee decided to revisit the issue of smoking policy following a request from the Refreshment Committee; requests from Members, both via Written Questions and privately to me; and representations from all three trade unions and the Staff Association, regarding health concerns of the staff of the House.
	As set out in the report, the committee recognised the valid health concerns of both Members and staff, and agreed the principle that,
	"staff should be entitled to work in a smoke-free environment".
	In addition, the committee agreed with the principle set out by the Refreshment Committee that,
	"it is extremely desirable that smoking should not be permitted where food is being served".
	That principle is also in line with the principles set out in the Government's White Paper Choosing Health, which, coincidentally, was published on the very day that the committee met.
	Although the committee agreed those two principles, its members were also keenly aware of the views of those who wished to continue to be permitted to smoke. The report, therefore, balances those views with the principles agreed by the committee. That is why the report recommends that smoking should not be permitted where food is served but should, for example, continue to be permitted in the Peers' Guest Room, where food is not served.
	The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, has suggested that further consultation should take place. Staff have already been consulted through the trade unions and the Staff Association, and the matter was discussed at length at the annual Whitley Committee meeting of representatives of management and staff. Members have been consulted in the domestic committees, and I remind noble Lords that both the Refreshment Committee and the Administration and Works Committee agreed that changes to the House's smoking policy should be put forward.
	In addition, noble Lords are being consulted in this debate and have the opportunity to put forward the views of other organisations, if they so wish. The report was not written to impose the views of the Administration and Works Committee; instead, the committee's recommendations have been set out in such a way as to provide noble Lords with the opportunity to table amendments. That opportunity has been enthusiastically taken up. This debate, and any votes that may follow, provides a highly effective way of consulting Members and ensuring that all views are fairly reflected in any smoking policy.
	I think that it is clear both from experience and from the first two amendments to the Motion that opinions on the matter are widely divergent. The Administration and Works Committee, in this report, has put forward one possible compromise, which takes into account our obligations towards our staff and the divergent views of Members. It is now for the House to decide whether that compromise is acceptable.
	Before I sit down, it may be helpful if I say a word on how it is anticipated that the debate should proceed. As noble Lords will have seen, a skeleton list of speakers has been circulated, which I hope will prove of assistance. After the Question has been put on my Motion for the first time, Amendment No. 1, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, will be called. After the noble Lord has introduced his amendment, the Question will be put and a single debate will then take place on the original Motion and all the amendments tabled, which, for the convenience of the House, have been numbered 1 to 8.
	As indicated on the list, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, in whose name Amendment No. 2 has been tabled, will speak first in the debate, to be followed by those noble Lords who have tabled the remaining Amendments Nos. 3 to 8. Thereafter, the debate will be open to any other noble Lord who wishes to take part. After all noble Lords who wish to do so have spoken, I will reply to the debate, before the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, replies to his own Amendment No. 1. A decision will then be taken on Amendment No 1.
	As my noble friend on the Woolsack will confirm when it is moved, if Amendment No. 1 is agreed to, the remaining amendments cannot be called. If, however, Amendment No. 1 is withdrawn or disagreed to, Amendment No. 2, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, will be called. In the usual way, Amendment No. 2A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, which is an amendment to Amendment No. 2, will be called immediately after Amendment No. 2 has been moved. If Amendment No. 2 is agreed to, whether or not amended, Amendments Nos. 3 to 8 cannot be called. If Amendment No. 2 is disagreed to, each subsequent amendment will be called in turn and decisions reached on them. Finally, the Question will be put on my original Motion, whether or not amended. I hope that that explanation is helpful. I beg to move.

Moved, That the first report from the Select Committee (HL Paper 209, Session 2003–04), be agreed to.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
	The report can be found at:
	http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200304/ldselect/ldaccwks/209/209.pdf

Lord Elton: My Lords, I should inform the House that if Amendment No. 1 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments Nos. 2 to 8, because of pre-emption.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: rose to move, as an amendment to the above Motion, to leave out "agreed to" and insert "referred back to the committee for further consideration, including:
	(a) consultation with Members of the House, staff of the House and others concerned with smokers' rights, including the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco;
	(b) consideration of the rights of smokers in any future plans for the Writing Room and the possible partition of the present Writing Room on a temporary basis; and
	(c) consideration of a possible reorganisation of the Bishops' Bar so that smoking could be permitted in one of the two rooms."

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I thank the Chairman of Committees for his explanation of the Motion. My amendment seeks to refer the report of the Administration and Works Committee for further consideration. Let me say straight away that I am a non-smoker but a member of the Lords and Commons Pipe and Cigar Smokers' Club, not only because I enjoy the company there but because I believe that smokers have rights.
	I do not believe that those rights are properly recognised generally, and the Administration and Works Committee has not given adequate consideration to them in its report. Everyone except smokers seems to have rights: rights of equality; disability rights; rights to enter Britain, even if suffering from transmittable diseases; and new rights for same-sex couples and sex-change people. Only last week, the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General told us that housebreakers, burglars, muggers and other criminals also have their rights. Everybody seems to have rights except law-abiding smokers. They are hounded, verbally abused, witch-hunted, and apparently, in the eyes of some people, are not fit for decent company.
	My amendment seeks to ensure that people in this House who are concerned with smokers' rights should be consulted, not only because they are concerned with those rights but because some of them, like the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross, have great knowledge and experience of the issues involved. I have also suggested that FOREST should be consulted, because it has great expertise in reconciling disputes that arise over smoking and non-smoking areas. I believe that separation is the correct way forward. FOREST is widely consulted by industry.
	I also make special reference in my amendment to the Writing Room and the Bishops' Bar, both of which are well used by noble Lords and are capable of accommodating smokers and non-smokers alike because they have separate entrances. In the case of the Bishops' Bar, it is possible to isolate staff from smokers in the smaller of the two rooms. In the case of the existing Writing Room, staff have little need of access, particularly now that self-service beverages are available. In any new accommodation for the Writing Room, provision must surely be made for smokers and non-smokers. I hope that the Chairman of Committees can give the assurance that that will be so.
	There will be objections that the work required to provide for both smokers and non-smokers in the two places mentioned in my amendment, and in the areas suggested in amendments tabled by other noble Lords—which I would expect to be considered in any event if my amendment is accepted—would be too expensive. But the amount involved is likely to be relatively small and would pale into sheer insignificance when compared with the tens of millions of pounds being spent on the parliamentary estate for works that are often, in the opinion of some of us, completely and utterly pointless.
	I have made the case for my amendment in as short a time as possible. But if it is accepted more evidence and suggestions will be made to facilitate the rights and interests of smokers and non-smokers alike.
	However, before I sit down—I do not want to speak again before I wind up—I would like to voice my total opposition to the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, which seeks to ban smoking throughout areas of the Palace of Westminster and the parliamentary estate under the control of the House of Lords. That would mean everywhere—I repeat, everywhere—including indoors and outdoors. That is absolutely monstrous. Anyone wanting a quick smoke would be banished to the street where they would probably be in far more danger from vehicle emissions than from the tobacco they were smoking.
	This is anti-smoker zealotry gone mad. The proposition is based on junk science and a great exaggeration of the risks involved from so-called passive smoking. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross, will deal in detail with that if he speaks in the debate. I would point out only that the risks from so-called passive smoking are far smaller than those, for example, of going into hospital where there are 5,000 actual deaths from MRSA. According to an article in the Daily Mail, 72,000 deaths in hospital have a contributory cause of medical blunders. Perhaps the medical profession should put its own house in order before demanding bans on smokers.
	Furthermore, it is far more dangerous for people to walk in the street than to be in the presence of smokers. Apart from 3,500 deaths, 45,000 injuries and billions of pounds of damage from road vehicles, it is estimated that there are 30,000 deaths a year from vehicle emissions, which is 30 times the alleged number of deaths from passive smoking. So why are we not banning all cars?

A noble Lord: A good idea.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, there we are: we will be banning everything before we know where we are and then none of us will know what to do with ourselves.
	Perhaps I may also point out that of the 120,000 so-called deaths from so-called smoking, 95,000 of those people are over the retirement age of 65. We have to die of something some day.

A noble Lord: That would not leave many of us.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, furthermore, for some people at least, smoking seems to be good for them. The late Lord Shinwell, a lifetime smoker, died at 101 years of age. Last week, in the Daily Mail, there was a report about a woman smoker who died at the age of 105. The heading was:
	"Smoker runs out of puff aged 105".
	The report says:
	"A woman who defied medical logic by living to 105 despite smoking 15 cigarettes a day"—
	I calculate that she smoked 500,000 cigarettes during her lifetime—
	"was laid to rest clutching a packet of her favourite brand.
	A wreath shaped like a cigarette was placed on her coffin and fellow residents at her nursing home sang along to Smoke Gets In Your Eyes at the funeral".
	So smoking obviously is not bad for some people.
	Indeed, who was it who said:
	"The effects of other people smoking in my presence are so small that it doesn't bother me"?
	It was none other than Sir Richard Doll on Radio 4's "Desert Island Discs" on 4 February 2001. Even Sir Richard Doll is not in favour of the noble Baroness's amendment.
	Finally, this issue is not just about health: it is also about individual rights. I cannot understand why these proposals are being rushed through on the last day before the Christmas Recess for implementation on 10 January, the day that we come back. There can be no justification for this undue haste. There has been smoking in this new Palace of Westminster for more than 150 years. A couple of months' delay would not hurt anyone. It would give room for further democratic consideration with many people who would wish to be consulted.
	After all, the Government's proposals are not likely to come in until 2006. So we ought not to rush this issue on the basis that all sorts of people have rights, including smokers. We can accommodate both smokers and non-smokers who do not wish to inhale second-hand smoke. I beg to move.
	Moved, as an amendment to the Motion, Amendment No. 1.—(Lord Stoddart of Swindon.)

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: My Lords, I speak to the amendment standing in my name on the Order Paper. When we were children, Santa used to smoke a large pipe, but out of consideration for his elves, particularly those with asthma, he has stopped smoking to avoid exposing them to environmental tobacco smoke.
	Noble Lords might ask why I have tabled the amendment. It is because the staff have asked me to. The three staff unions—the GMB, Prospect, PCS—and the Staff Association, have asked for this amendment because they are aware that they stand a three times higher risk of dying from passive smoking than from an accident at work.
	I shall cover the three areas addressed in the amendment in turn. First, in the Truro Room it is extremely unlikely that filters would remove the harmful molecules that float around. I shall not bore your Lordships with a list of chemical soup and its effects. We all know that, and I am sure that everyone wants to go Christmas shopping rather than hear me reiterate all the health arguments.
	However, I should like to remind your Lordships that smouldering tobacco is a fire hazard. The Truro Room is part of the Library where there is a great deal of paper and where the House of Lords Journal and the sessional papers are stored. The staff, who cannot just dive in and out of the room, estimate that they spend about 10 minutes collecting a paper, even when they know where it is, or when filing papers that have been brought out. They cannot ask a smoker to go in because we often ask for papers at very short notice. During the hunting debate a couple of weeks ago, a Member of the House asked a librarian to fetch a sessional paper immediately for the debate that was under way. Indeed, our Library staff give us an excellent service.
	I should remind noble Lords that in 1999 the Library Committee made a commitment to make the Library smoke free. That was reiterated in a Written Answer from the then Chairman of Committees:
	"In June 1999 the Library and Computers Sub-Committee agreed that the ultimate aim should be that the Library should be an entirely smoke-free area as soon as possible".—[Official Report, 21/12/00; col. WA 77.]
	That is not exactly yesterday. The staff of the Library were given an undertaking which has not yet been met.
	I shall address Peers' own offices. I have no objection at all to Peers being put together in an unserviced outbuilding, but it is unreasonable to expect staff to clean and service offices full of environmental tobacco smoke if they do not wish to do so.
	The Peers' Guest Room is the next area for consideration. I firmly believe that we have to lead by example. Our own Chief Medical Officer has recommended in a report that there should be no smoking in the workplace. Parliament should be a flagship of good practice. In attempting to decrease tobacco consumption in the population, what message do we send if we ignore the call from the staff themselves, on whom we depend, to respect their health? The intake of passive smoke among bar staff is two to three times higher than that of people living with a smoking partner, if they do not work in a bar. Many of our staff are aged under 40, which is a lower average age than among ourselves, I dare say, and many of the women on our staff are in their childbearing years.
	Do not fall for the pleasure argument. That rush of pleasure experienced within seven seconds of inhaling is the nicotine rush that satisfies the craving of addiction in smokers.
	I should like to make it clear that the Sports and Social Club mentioned in the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Palmer is outside this report and therefore falls outside the wording of my amendment.
	Your Lordships can smoke, but we have no right to pollute the atmosphere of the staff, who give us fantastic and loyal service. Without their collective knowledge, I think that we would literally be sunk. The staff want to be able to work in an environment that is smoke free. As human beings one to another, we have no right to jeopardise their health. This is a working House, not a smokers' day centre or a club.

Lord Palmer: My Lords, I feel that I must start by stating that I think smoking is the most revolting, unhealthy and disgusting habit, but I do have to admit to being a smoker. Needless to say, I much enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, and I agree with him about bans. Indeed, I am reminded of an editorial in the Daily Star some time ago:
	"Let's have a Bill to ban banning",
	although the editorial in fact referred to the threat of a Bill to ban hunting with hounds.
	Having said that, I support entirely the amendment proposed by my old friend the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart. He has emphasised the serious holes in the report from the committee. All my amendments have been tabled because I do not believe that the proposal has been sufficiently thought through by the Chairman of Committees and his committee. However, I do feel that the amendments tabled by my noble friends Lady Finlay and Lady Howarth are really far too draconian; my amendments are remarkably modest in comparison.
	I refer most especially to the gaping error of not allowing our hardworking staff to use their dedicated rest rooms as smoking rooms where they have been specifically designated as smoking areas. This is particularly important when the House sits late which, sadly, it seems to be doing an increasing amount of the time.
	I understand that the Sports and Social Club could be deemed to be in no-man's-land but, for the avoidance of any future doubt, I thought it important to specify that any ban would not apply to it. However, I am now reliably informed that the club does not come under the jurisdiction of your Lordships' House and, therefore, technically the second part of my amendment is not necessary.
	It is important not to forget that smoking is still a legal pastime, one practised by 26 per cent of the adult population of the United Kingdom. I accept that these figures are not reflected in your Lordships' House. I reckon that a total of 37 Peers smoke, 19 of whom are Life Peers and 18 elected Peers. It should also not be forgotten that annually the Exchequer receives not less than £10 billion from smokers. There are some 6,000 full-time jobs in the tobacco industry; 23,000 people are involved in supplying the industry; and nearly 58,000 in retailing and distribution.
	We should also bear in mind the greatly improved air conditioning plants that have been installed throughout the Palace of Westminster, most especially in the Bishops' Bar. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, that it should not be too difficult to rearrange that particular bar so that part of it is for smokers and the remainder completely smoke free.
	I turn to the eighth amendment to the Motion concerning the Cholmondeley Room. Again, given the new air conditioning plant, non-smokers are enjoying a relatively smoke-free atmosphere. I think that it is wrong that those who have arranged to hold a function in the Cholmondeley Room, in particular weddings, are not to be able to allow their guests to smoke.
	The third amendment to the Motion in my name refers to the Barry Room. Surely there must be somewhere within the Palace where Members can lunch or dine with a guest where smoking is permitted.
	On arriving here nearly 15 years ago, I remember being told that the House of Lords was the last bastion of civilisation. Since then, places where one can smoke have been dramatically reduced and I am in favour of some of the restrictions that have already been imposed. But I feel that both of the amendments tabled by my noble friends are intolerant and unnecessary and, indeed, would diminish the reputation of your Lordships' House as the last bastion of civilisation.
	One of the worst sights in Britain today is that of office entranceways crammed with smokers. Do we really want our staff and, indeed, some Members of your Lordships' House, to be forced into that syndrome? I would venture to suggest that we do not.
	In conclusion, if the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, decides to test the opinion of the House, I hope that as many noble Lords as possible will feel able to support him. Indeed, should my amendments be put to a vote, I hope that they will be supported by all parts of the House.

Lord Monson: My Lords, I must first declare an interest as a light smoker, a libertarian and a supporter of FOREST, although I have not consulted that organisation in any way on this debate. Like the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, I deplore the way this whole business is being rushed through in a panic, potentially depriving smokers of their very longstanding rights and doing so without full consultation—there has been some consultation, but not nearly enough—and with a proposed date of implementation only three weeks away. What on earth is the rush?
	The report contains some curious assertions. Why is it,
	"extremely desirable that smoking should not be permitted where food is being served"?
	That is taken from paragraph 9. Either environmental tobacco smoke is like mustard gas, or whatever it was that Saddam Hussein dropped on the Kurds—in which case tobacco should be outlawed immediately and treated like heroin or crack cocaine—or it is not. Of course it is not, and so it becomes a matter of personal taste. I would never dismiss personal taste as a matter to be taken into consideration, but the presence or absence of food is irrelevant from the health point of view.
	Paragraph 12 asserts that,
	"staff should be entitled to work in a smoke-free environment".
	To the extent that some members of staff find tobacco smoke irritating, their wishes should be accommodated, but by no means all the members of our staff do so—as some of them have told me. The health of employees is prayed in aid, yet a 39-page summary of 64 epidemiological studies from all over the world—Europe, North America and Asia—investigating possible links between environmental tobacco smoke and either lung cancer or heart disease shows that the evidence is inconclusive, although admittedly the summary does not investigate the possible links between smoking and bronchitis.
	The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, is right to quote Professor Sir Richard Doll on the subject. The professor was of course the first person to establish a link between active smoking and cancer, but he has a very different take on passive smoking. If environmental tobacco smoke were as lethal as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, claims, I would not be here today and neither would most of your Lordships. Anyone born and brought up in the 1930s, 1940s or 1950s will inevitably have spent their formative years totally enveloped in other people's smoke. There was always at least one adult who smoked in most households, quite often two. People smoked in offices, factories, hospitals, on all forms of public transport, in cinemas, university lecture halls and so on.
	And yet we have a pensions crisis today, one reason for which is that those born in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s are living very much longer than government and other actuaries had forecast, throwing the calculations of annuity providers totally into disarray. In fact, we are said to be the healthiest generations ever—much healthier than those born since who have, perhaps, been brought up on too much junk food and too little exercise.
	So let us not confuse annoyance—and I do not deny that heavy concentrations of tobacco smoke are annoying—with an alleged, but unproven, serious threat to human life. My amendments are designed to minimise this annoyance by permitting smoking only in the larger room of the Bishops' Bar after virtually everyone has finished their lunch or dinner; and in the dining room after virtually everyone has finished their tea. As regards the dining room, it simply replicates the current arrangements; as regards the main room of the Bishops' Bar, with its agreeable, convivial and very British ambience—which some are trying to turn into a neurotic Californian ambience—my amendment is much more restrictive compared with the status quo. I much prefer the status quo but one must be realistic and seek a compromise.
	The objective is to strike a fair balance between not two but three groups—smokers; those who do not smoke but who enjoy the company of smokers and do not mind their smoke, which I believe is a very large group; and those who hate smoke in any concentration. My amendments achieve that balance.

Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords—

Noble Lords: No!

Lord Campbell of Alloway: I am sorry.

Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, I rise to speak to the amendment standing in my name on the Order Paper.
	We have heard some of the evidence from my noble friend Lady Finlay of Llandaff. I was not going to go through the evidence again but, as it has been questioned, I need to reiterate some of the numbers and what is the reality for people on the ground. The evidence is incontrovertible. If my noble friends have not visited the original evidence themselves, I would refer them to it because it is fairly stunning.
	Professor Konrad Jamrozik of Imperial College London has estimated that exposure to second-hand smoke in the workplace causes around 700 premature deaths in the UK each year. This can be compared with the total number of deaths in the UK from all industrial accidents reported by the Health and Safety Executive. The degree of risk depends on the extent and duration of exposure, and therefore bar staff have the increased exposure which my noble friend has already explained.
	I wish to refer simply to the Peers' Guest Room. The reason for doing so I shall come to later. In the White Paper, Choosing Health, the Government set out proposals to ban smoking in most workplaces and in public places. If we accept the evidence—which, as I have said, I think is incontrovertible—we have a responsibility to choose health for our staff and for ourselves and to set an example. It therefore follows that commonsense and care for staff means that this House will accept the recommendation of the Chairman of Committees and, if we do so, the same arguments will apply to the Peers' Guest Room.
	At present, the staff there are expected to serve drinks in what is often a smoke-laden atmosphere, with all the risks that such exposure brings. I have personally not noticed the reduction in smoke when I go in there despite, as I understand it, the information we have had about filters. We know how helpful and accommodating our staff are—they are unlikely to make this case for themselves—but the risks of heart disease, a stroke or cancer are all there.
	I am president of John Grooms, an organisation for disabled people, and I visit our brain-damage unit at Stowmarket. I have seen the results of a stroke. I have seen shattered families, where a stroke has changed their whole lives; where a parent has been taken out of a family and the rest of the family struggle. Often the victims have been heavy smokers who have reaped the results of their smoking.
	I also speak from a personal interest and for many Peers who have spoken to me. We, too, would like to choose health. The Peers' Guest Room is the one reasonable place where one can entertain a guest before lunch or dinner. For me and for many of your Lordships these guests might be family and friends, but they are often contacts to further some aspect of the House or broader interests such as, for me, the All-Party Group on Children. This makes the Peers' Guest Room my workplace too and it can be unpleasant and embarrassing to take guests who deal with medical issues, child development and environmental matters into a smoke-filled bar. Noble Lords have spoken to me about this.
	In conclusion, perhaps I may deal with the question of rights. Some of your Lordships may wish to smoke: I have every wish to prevent you from doing so. I watched both my parents die from extremely appalling smoke-related diseases. I have grown very fond of some of your Lordships—especially the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington. I recognise freewill and I understand, because I lived in a smoke-filled atmosphere in my childhood, that you may wish to choose ill health, but that should not infringe the rights of others and impair their health. For that reason, I wish to add simply the Peers' Guest Room to the list of exclusions. At the moment it is a place where staff, non-smoking Peers and their guests are exposed to risks which are totally unacceptable. I wish to choose health, and I ask your Lordships to join me in that choice.

Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I apologise to your Lordships and the noble Baroness. It was not my intention originally to speak and I did not know that there was a speakers' list. I shall be very brief. I have an interest to declare, of course, and all your Lordships know it. It does not have to be registered as yet.
	If we look at the composition of the Committee we will see that it is a pale reflection of the usual channels. You may well ask yourselves what is the object of remitting anything to the usual channels because they will come back with the same report, but I think it is worth a try.
	On this issue, rhetoric is no substitute for reason. I support the concept of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, that we should remit the issue for reconsideration in the light of this debate. We should reconsider the position of the Bishops' Bar because, as has been said, arrangements could be made to ensure that there is no smoking where food is served. That proposal has not been considered in a fair way.
	Secondly, as to the guest room, it is a funny kind of workplace. It is a room constructed with a high-vaulted ceiling. I have never noticed a noxious concentration of smoke that has ever inconvenienced anyone. In the circumstances, I am certain that it would never be such. We need some independent evidence to accommodate the staff, who, I agree, should not be subjected to passive smoking. The problem is that this report, which purports to be even-handed, is not even-handed. It is not proportionate. No thought whatever is given to provision for those who smoke. The Truro Room, which I call the smokers' punishment room, is impossible with its present form of ventilation. It is perfectly possible that segregated areas can be arranged.
	Finally I say this, and only this. We are masters of our procedures. I am informed that the idea is that these recommendations will be reflected in Standing Orders. They should take some—I am not saying much, but some—fair and proportionate account of those who smoke. At the moment, they effectively take none. There should be no abuse in our Standing Orders of a minority interest, which is what we are. There should be a reasonable, practical, fair provision, strictly related to enclosed places, and excluding, of course, the Terrace.

Baroness Boothroyd: My Lords, I rise to support the amendment so ably moved by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon. He spoke with a good deal of common sense, tinged with a good deal of humour. I shall not weary your Lordships. We have all heard the arguments, not only during this debate but also over the past few years. I rise to ask one question on the report itself. I refer noble Lords to Page 4, Paragraph 12.
	Paragraph 12 is drawn to our special attention. The two principles stated there guided the committee. One of the principles is that,
	"staff should be entitled to work in a smoke-free environment".
	The second is that,
	"smoking should not be permitted where food is being served".
	I have very little quarrel with those two principles. But having laid down those principles, the committee seems then to have ignored them totally.
	The committee goes on to recommend to us that,
	"smoking should no longer be permitted in . . . the Writing Room".
	We all know the Writing Room. I use it, as do many other noble Lords. The Writing Room is a very large room in which no staff work at any time. It is a room in which no food is ever served. Coffee and tea are available while we read or write our notes, but the Writing Room is a do-it-yourself area. We serve ourselves drinks by means of a machine, and we place money in the box with our very own little hands. There is no one there to help us.
	As the two principles which the committee highlighted and by which it reached its recommendations do not relate to the Writing Room—where there are no staff and no food—perhaps the Chairman of Committees will enlighten the House, and certainly me, on why it is now out of bounds to anyone who wants to smoke a cigarette there. I think that it would be a very wise move if we were to refer this whole matter back to the committee for reconsideration.

Lord Borrie: My Lords, I must declare an interest as a member of the Refreshment Committee. I should also say that I am a non-smoker and have been since my days of military service, which are some 40 years ago and therefore do not really count. It is not surprising, therefore, that I am in favour of the principles set out in the report and that I am largely in favour of the conclusions. In fact, I would go further. I feel confirmed in that view by hearing the two noble Baronesses who spoke earlier to their amendments and mentioned specifically the Truro Room of the Library and the Peers' Guest Room.
	As regards especially the Peers' Guest Room, I find it extraordinary that when I want to discuss a work-related matter with people or when I am entertaining people simply for the sake of entertaining them, the only place I can take them for a drink before lunch or dinner is somewhere which, especially at dinner time, is most unpleasant to any non-smoker. It is most unpleasant because the air and the curtains are such that it is intolerable. I always pray—in the summertime, at any rate—that one might be able to take people to the Terrace and get a bit of air, which I suppose is fresh, from the Thames. At least that is an alternative.
	I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, I think, referred to the number of smoker Peers. I know quite a number of them, and I realise that there are quite a few active, diligent smoker Peers among us. I therefore do not go along with the more extreme view that smoking should be completely barred throughout the part of the parliamentary estate for which the House of Lords is responsible. Surely we do not want our smoker Peers to be pariahs. I would suggest to your Lordships that many smoker Peers have tried, and probably more than once, to give up. But they are addicts. They are, if I may say so, socially disabled people. I hope that they do not mind my saying so. We have to make some provision for them.
	I was therefore much impressed by the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, in paragraph (c) of his amendment, where he refers specifically to the Bishops' Bar. It is not beyond the wit of man, or the expense to which we go in the summertime to improve our premises, for the Bishops' Bar to be converted into two parts. Smokers should be able to go to one of them. I do not think it satisfactory that smokers should be barred completely from the premises and have to go into the wind and cold outside or be confined to a part of the estate where they cannot also have a chat and a drink. I put it that way because I do not think that the Truro Room of the Library is a substitute for a civilised place where our smoker colleagues can go.
	Surely that is the minimum that we should allow, despite all the arguments which I fully accept—especially those from the two noble Baronesses who spoke earlier—that smoking is most undesirable and that the staff must be considered as well as ourselves.

Lord Russell-Johnston: My Lords, I rise to support the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart—an experience that I have never previously enjoyed. The amendment that he has tabled is reasonable and moderate whereas those proposed by the Chairman of Committees—who as an individual is well known to be reasonable and moderate—are sweeping and draconian and, as has been remarked, are being introduced with insufficient consultation on the last day of the Session, when many Members have already gone. I do not think that such a rush is necessary.
	I speak as an intermittent smoker. Actually, this is my ninth day without a cigarette.

Noble Lords: Hear, hear.

Lord Russell-Johnston: My Lords, I have managed that because I never promise myself to stop altogether. I know that I like smoking and I know that I will smoke again. If I made a new year's resolution or something like that, I would break it and that would be bad for my self-esteem.
	I do not deny that people who dislike or fear smoking should be protected, but I do not see why this should necessarily be by means of a complete ban which removes all choice, for staff as well. To listen to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, one would think that the staff were 100 per cent non-smokers. We know that that is far from being true. I should have thought that it is not impossible for somebody on the staff to serve in the bar where smoking is permitted.
	I suppose it has been clearly established, and I would not like to argue with the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth—that smoking can have harmful and sometimes fatal results. That is even allowing for the 105 year-old lady that the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, unearthed—although perhaps "unearthed" is the wrong word. The effects of passive smoking, however, upon which the whole of this report and recommendations rests, are not quite so certain. Like everybody else, I see surveys periodically in the press which claim it is injurious to some degree but never indicate the size of the area in which the test took place, how many were smoking there, how frequently they were smoking or whether, as somebody has already said, it took place in a city such as London. The noble Lord, Lord Borrie, spoke about going to the Terrace for a breath of fresh air—he must have been joking. The diesel fumes that belch out hourly in this city, of which we are at the heart, definitely have an effect.
	I shall not delay your Lordships more, but turning to paragraph 3 of the amendment, the Bishops' Bar has already been referred to by a number of people. It is not impossible to have something fairly rigid in place. At the moment, there is a non-smoking room and a smoking room, but there is an open space between the two. But as several noble Lords have already said, it is possible for the two to be clearly distinct.
	Nobody has yet mentioned that the Bishops' Bar has a fairly small but regular clientele. The same people go there all the time and the same people do not. This is anecdotal, but I would say that, of those who go there regularly, about 60 per cent smoke. Smoking is, after all, not always a solitary, but a social, pursuit. As has been said, a smoke and a drink relax people. I think it is reasonable to have that. Surely it will not do a great deal of harm to take a little longer at least to give a fair hearing to the criticisms that a number of your Lordships have already made. As the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, said, the Government's regulations nationwide will not come into effect until 2006, so surely we can afford to take a little more time.

Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, I wholeheartedly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, who is usually right in his views. In default of his amendment, I support those of my noble friends Lord Palmer and Lord Monson.
	I have not smoked for some years, but I spent 40 years of my life kippering all my friends and relations. As a result, I have the greatest sympathy for poor smokers, who are now about to be hounded almost out of existence, and, if the noble Baronesses and their virtuous friends have their way, forced to stand in the street in the pouring rain in order to have a quick puff.
	As a member of the Refreshment Committee, however, I have some concern about the Guest Room, the Barry Room and the banqueting facilities, on which the catering operation here depends to wash its financial face. Peers wishing to entertain guests who smoke may well decide to take them elsewhere, and quite a lot of the very lucrative banqueting trade, such as wedding receptions, could go elsewhere. People may well not be prepared to pay the prices charged here—which are not small, although the value is extremely good—for their guests to be made miserable. With the improved air-conditioning plants which are now available and which have been installed in, among other places, the Bishops' Bar, and with a ban on smoking before a certain time, as proposed by my noble friend Lord Palmer, it should be possible to accommodate everyone.
	I have two suggestions for your Lordships. The Salisbury Room would make a very good smoking room. In addition, staff who clean smoking rooms could be provided with masks.
	It ill becomes a Government whose exchequer benefits to the tune of some £10 billion a year from smokers to be so anxious to kill off the goose which lays such a large and sorely needed golden egg. We hear endlessly about the dangers of passive smoking, and how it is now scientifically proved to kill. Knowing how scientists continually change their tune, I shall not be surprised to be told in 20 years' time, should I happen to be alive then, that of course now they know better and it is not harmful at all.

Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, your Lordships may be surprised to know that the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and I are really very good friends. We agreed that we would be mortal enemies today, but we have now declared our situation.
	As it is now three years since I gave up smoking, your Lordships may think that I am rather impertinent to stand up and speak today. Just for the record, however, I gave up smoking not for health reasons but because the habit had become too expensive.
	In all this talk about the Guest Room, a very good case has been made for the return of the Pugin Room, perhaps as a smokers' paradise. I respect the feelings of those who abhor cigarette smoke, but I also respect the feelings of those who wish to indulge in what, after all, is a legal occupation in this country. I find it very hard to believe the passive smoking theory. Here I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Monson. If it were true about passive smoking, many of us here should be pushing up the daisies. I bet that most of our parents smoked.
	I do not like to be bullied for "my own good". If there is a vote, I suggest that there is a little tolerance on both sides of this vexatious question. If there is a vote, I shall most certainly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart.

Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. In view of the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, I can say that both my parents were smokers: my mother died at 60 and my father at 65, both of diseases related to smoking. I think that that counters the point that our parents lived long because they were smokers or because it did not affect them.
	It seems to me that there are two central themes in the Administration and Works Committee report, the bulk of which I very strongly support. I thank the Lord Chairman for producing such a thoughtful and helpful report. The first theme is that not only is passive smoking unpleasant for everyone—or almost everyone—who has to put up with it but the committee agrees with the Chief Medical Officer and every other objective medical expert that it is dangerous to health.
	It is interesting that the code of practice on workplace smoking contained in the Houses of Parliament Health and Safety Risk Management Manual states:
	"Evidence suggests that those exposed to passive smoke are at increased risk of illness including lung cancer, nasal cancer and heart disease. In addition, passive smoking can trigger or aggravate respiratory conditions such as asthma or bronchitis. It can also irritate eyes, cause coughs or headaches and generally make non-smokers feel ill, uncomfortable and unpleasant".
	In making my second point, I quote from the minutes of the Administration and Works Committee held on 16 November. They state:
	"The Committee recognised that staff had valid health concerns, and agreed the principle that staff should be entitled to work in a smoke-free environment".
	I suggest that today we must judge the recommendations and proposed amendments against those criteria. If we do so, we can quickly decide that the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, Lord Palmer and Lord Monson, fail to meet the criteria set by the committee and the code of practice.
	How do the committee's recommendations match up to its own criteria and that of the code of practice? They match up pretty well, except in one important respect. If our aim is to protect our staff from the effects of passive smoking, there can be no justification for exempting the Peers' Guest Room from the new arrangements. There is no air extraction system in the room, apart from opening the windows. It would be completely useless to install one, even if it could be done without destroying the fabric of the room.
	All the evidence suggests that unless an extraction fan has the power of a tornado and is located over the heads of all smokers, it does not reduce the pollution of the air for everyone. Imagining that an extraction system can remove smoke in a room such as the Peers' Guest Room is like assuming that you can swim in a chlorine-free path in a swimming pool.
	I shall certainly support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and the remainder of the report.

Lord Harris of High Cross: My Lords, I want to make a serious confession. Not only am I a life-long pipe smoker, but for some 10 years the chairman of an organisation known as FOREST—the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco. It is well represented in the better parts of this House.
	I want to go to the central point made by the noble Lord, Lord Falkland, on the Roy Castle Foundation. We are not talking about the admitted and acknowledged hazards of direct smoking. We are talking about passive smoking—the illusive, will-o'-the-wisp passive smoking—and few people in this House will understand how epidemiologists go about trying to identify it. I shall therefore tell your Lordships.
	The big idea is summed up in the phrase "spousal smoking". In order to estimate the long-term, even life-time, effect of smoking, the epidemiologists take two groups. They take a control group of non-smokers who are selected from a cross-section of the population. They take an equal number of lung cancer cases and non-cancer cases and they set about identifying the exposure of those cases to environmental tobacco smoke—ETS. In a way, it is almost comic because you cannot get hold of, measure, calibrate or identify tobacco smoke in a scientific fashion.
	Therefore, they ask the control group a whole lot of questions about their background in this smoking lark. How much did their parents smoke? How about others? What about their husbands—how many packets a week did they smoke? They are told, "Write it down and let us have the details of all this". They are asked whether, when all this smoking was going on, the windows were open in the room or firmly shut. One then gets an idea of the kind of exposure as reported by those selected who have lung cancer and who are or were married to a smoker.
	Questions are then asked of their children, of their grand-children and of their nieces and nephews; for instance, "What did Daisy smoke when she was alive? How many a week was she smoking when she died? Write it down. Let's have magnitudes and quantities.". It sounds laborious and, in a manner of speaking, scientific if only you could measure the extra smoke and parcel it up.
	However, there are a number of problems. A major one is concerned with the nature of cancer as being multi-factorial. Cancer is caused by a whole host of conditions, circumstances and so forth. Some people will be seriously affected by those and others will not. To compare the cancer group and the non-cancer group, one would need to identify all the differences between them in terms of diet, heredity, background, exposure to radon and noxious fumes and so forth.
	The research is conducted through examination and cross-examination and one is faced with the fact that many cancer cases vehemently declare that they are non-smokers. Indeed, research shows that 5 to 25 per cent of professed non-smokers turn out to be former or even current smokers.
	In all such comparative investigations, proof of death by ETS turns on comparing two speculative, subjective "guestimates" of long-term exposure. There is the exposure of the non-smoking lung cancer cases compared with the non-smokers who do not have lung cancer. The difference between the two decides the results of exposure to smoke—to passive smoking.
	The statisticians get to work on all this data, having their computers brim-full of it. They try to decide on the relative risk to non-smokers who do not have lung cancer compared with the same size group of non-smokers who do have lung cancer. The effort is to identify the relative risk; the risk to those who are non-smokers and the risk to those who are non-smokers but who have lung cancer because they have been exposed to other people's smoke. A figure—a relative risk—is produced. A relative risk of one means that there is no greater hazard. A relative risk of 1.25 means that there has been a 25 per cent increased exposure to passive smoking. The key point is that epidemiologists agree that you need a high difference; not a 1.25 or 1.5 relative risk, but at least 2—a doubling of exposure—to amount to any kind of greater risk.
	A study which I recently conducted, soon to be published, of these issues took 80 cases of spousal smoking. I found that of the 80, 57 would not be statistically significant on the strictest interpretation of the "confidence intervals" of the statisticians and that 10 of the 80 cases would imply a protective effect—an immunising effect—of exposure to smoking.
	The great authority who has been quoted, Sir Richard Doll, has said:
	"When relative risk lies between 1 and 2, problems of interpretation may become so acute and it may be extremely difficult to disentangle various contributions of biased information, confounding of two or more factors".
	The National Cancer Institute in 1994 said:
	"In epidemiological research, relative risks of less than 2.0 are considered too small and usually difficult to interpret. Such increases may be due to chance, statistical bias or the effects of confounding factors".
	When Sir Richard Doll, the doyen of epidemiologists, was interviewed on "Desert Island Discs", he angered the ASH brigade by saying:
	"The effect of other people smoking in my presence is so small it doesn't worry me".
	If one goes on, one finds evidence that the whole thing is vastly not only exaggerated but twisted. The truth of the matter is that, if we look at the statistics, we can see that there is no risk. There may be inconvenience or discomfort; if one has asthma, like one noble Lord here, there may be more than discomfort. But as a general rule, passive smoking is not a factor with regard to health.
	The SCOTH report—the report of the Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health—strove might and main to discover some evidence of the risk of passive smoking. In the end, it had to acknowledge that it was difficult to find the magnitude of numbers of people exposed to passive smoking, but decided that if we looked hard enough, we might find a relative risk of 1.25—an increased exposure of 25 per cent. The committee said that,
	"taking all the supporting data into consideration we conclude that passive smoking in non-smokers exposed over a substantial part of their life, is associated with a 10 to 30 per cent increase in the risk of lung cancer that could account for"—
	"perhaps", it says—
	"several hundred lung cancer deaths per annum".
	The report says there is a 10 to 30 per cent increase in risk, whereas we know that epidemiologists say that at least a doubling of the risk would be necessary. It says that there will be, perhaps, several hundred victims of this phantom disease in a population of some 60 million.
	There is nothing in it! We need not put the shutters down on the Peers' Guest Room and every other outlet; we can try in a civilised way to separate those who are fussed about it and leave most of us to get on with our lives in an ordinary way.

Lord Peston: My Lords, I shall try to be brief. I love your Lordships' House and I have enjoyed every minute of the 18 years that I have been here, one reason for that being that there is no view so barmy that no Peer will espouse or express it. Those who have spoken, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross, but also the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, have reached a standard that I have not seen in the past 18 years.
	In particular, I am interested to note that Peers with no qualifications whatever have the neck to say that the massive amount of research that has gone into the subject, including passive smoking, has no cogency at all. We have in our presence two people who really do know their stuff—namely, the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay and Lady Howarth. But they have shown real restraint. They have not spoken at length to set out all the research results. I can only say, as someone who has read the research results but does not regard himself as an expert, that I know of no researcher in this field who doubts the evidence on smoking in general and passive smoking in particular. We cannot take a decision today on the basis of amateur and ignorant interventions.
	Equally preposterous is the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, about whom we should consult. He suggests that we should consult the body called FOREST. That is a body that exists solely as a group of apologists for the manufacturers and sellers of the most lethal product available on public sale in this country. That is what that group's moral and ethical position is; the notion that we would consult them seems to me to be as ridiculous as anything that I have heard.
	I certainly object to all the amendments put forward here, apart from the only two sensible amendments—those of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, which corresponds to the best thinking of the day, and of the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, who has tabled a compromise amendment on the basis of what we are likely to debate today.
	Those are my main and, as always, well-balanced remarks. I wish to add one other matter, which concerns me most of all. On the subject of rights in this place, it is taken for granted by the pro-smokers that there is a symmetry between the position of the smokers and the position of the remainder. The point is that there is no such symmetry—the two things are completely different. The smokers smoke for themselves and do not care about others; the others are the people who are damaged. So the notion that we must somehow strike a balance and that we are attacking fundamental rights makes no philosophical sense at all. When we divide, as I hope that we do, I hope that noble Lords do not fall into the irrational trap of assuming that, in the way typical of your Lordships' House, we must have a balanced compromise.

Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the noble Lord has made a fascinating speech, but he has not mentioned the legality of smoking—nothing to do with forcing or sentimentality, but the fact that it is a legal occupation.

Lord Peston: My Lords, I say two things to the noble Baroness. It is legal to buy cigarettes, of course. I am sure that she has the same very high moral standards that I have. There are a great many things that are legal that I do not do, on the grounds that they are unethical and immoral. I do not agree with the notion that it is legal and that therefore it is okay. None of us speaking on this side of the debate have remotely suggested that smokers should be stopped from buying cigarettes or smoking them in the privacy of their own dwellings.
	What we want is for them not to smoke when we are around, particularly when we have guests or when we are eating. We are seeking to achieve that in your Lordships' House. I accept the other fundamental point of view, again related to my love of this place, that we ought to be in the lead on this matter, not be dragged kicking and screaming because a tiny minority of people, whose credentials, as I have said, I doubt, do not want us to move forward.

Baroness Neuberger: My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Peston, in this debate, as I agree with absolutely everything that he has said. I shall speak briefly to support the amendment put so ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, and also to support, although it does not go far enough for my taste, the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth.
	We have heard a huge number of people in this House challenging the validity of incontrovertible hard scientific evidence, which has been given by the Chief Medical Officer and other distinguished scientists. I do not really think that that is appropriate in this House.
	I am a very new Member of your Lordships' House and cannot claim the 18 years of seniority that the noble Lord, Lord Peston, has claimed. But as many noble Lords will know, when a new Member first arrives, she does not have a desk. When I first arrived, it was suggested to me that I go and work in the Writing Room, but that is somewhere where people smoke. I am a former smoker. I am not really a reformed character because, 33 years on I still miss the odd cigarette, particularly late in the evening. But I do not wish to be exposed to other people's cigarette smoke and I do not believe that those of us in this House who feel that way and know of the health dangers should want to be exposed to other people's cigarette, pipe and cigar smoke.
	But that is only one reason for believing that it is important to ban smoking. The main reason we should do so is for the staff, who asked the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, to introduce her amendment and who cannot make their case properly in this Chamber themselves. It seems to me that it is important that we support the desire of the staff to work in a safe and healthy environment. As regards testing the issue of smokers' rights as against the rights of the rest of us, no one has absolute rights in that regard. It seems to me that the rights of the rest of us, and particularly the rights of the staff in this House, should win out. Therefore, I support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff.

Lord Ackner: My Lords, I am delighted to add to the degree of harmony that has apparently descended upon the House. I, too, happily support the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth of Breckland, and I do so on the very short and simple question: do we accept that passive smoking injures health? We have a number of sources to show that that should be looked upon now as common ground. The BMA says that 1,000 people a year die from passive smoking. The Chief Medical Officer recommended a ban on smoking in enclosed public places three years ago. However, nothing has happened as a result.
	Given that it is common ground that passive smoking injures to the extent of even causing death, there should be no issue on this question at all. Those who insist on smoking have the liberty to do it at home; they have liberty to do it outside; they have liberty to do it in the corridors here. That should be more than sufficient. You should not run the risk of injuring other people's health purely to smoke for your own enjoyment, which can be carried out elsewhere. Accordingly I seek to add to the harmony that has suddenly descended on the House.

Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords—

Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, we have reached the stage where most things that can be said on this subject have been said. Therefore, if no one objects, I shall attempt to sum up the debate as briefly as possible before the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, decides what to do with his amendment.
	I cannot possibly comment on individual speeches as I believe there were 16 of them, more or less evenly divided between the pros and the antis. Most of them were delivered in an amusing and good humoured way. I must admit that one completely lost me but I shall not go into that.
	A number of noble Lords suggested that the matter was being rushed and that the House should have more time to deal with it. It has not been rushed. It has been considered by two domestic committees: the Administration and Works Committee and the Refreshment Committee. As I said in my opening remarks, the issue was revisited following serious representations from staff and their unions. The difference between now and 1999, when this issue was last considered, is that in the view of many people now the evidence regarding passive smoking is overwhelming. Therefore, we must consider it now from that point of view. The fact is that if we were to do nothing, there is a very good chance that the House would be taken to court by some members of the staff.
	Someone asked why smoking is not banned throughout the Palace if the concerns of the staff are paramount. At the moment staff volunteer to work in those areas where smoking is permitted. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find staff to volunteer to do so, but under the proposals put forward in the report the number of areas where smoking is permitted will be greatly reduced. It is expected that it will be possible to staff the remaining areas with volunteers.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, asked why the Writing Room was included in the report. Staff have to go into the Writing Room, and that is why it is included. As I said in my opening remarks, and is made very clear in the report at paragraph 10:
	"The Committee acknowledges that any significant changes in smoking policy should be a matter for the whole House. Accordingly, the Committee has made a number of recommendations, and has done so in such a way as to facilitate the tabling of amendments".
	As is evident, no amendment was tabled on the subject of the Writing Room, although that could have been done.
	As regards the Bishops' Bar, a number of noble Lords said that it should be divided properly into two and not be left as it is now, which is effectively one room where food is served in both halves. The possible division of that room would be a matter for the Refreshment Committee. It could occur but that would mean that there would be a smoking only section where no food was served. At the moment noble Lords seem to enjoy having food served in both halves of the room.
	Other than to reaffirm why I recommend that the House accepts the report as it stands, there is little more for me to say. I suggest that we get on with the business.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, first, I should like to thank all those noble Lords who have taken part in what has been, until the last minutes, a well informed and, indeed, well ordered and decent debate. Even those noble Lords who oppose my amendment, except one, have been kind and have conducted the debate in the normal way in which we conduct debates in this House.
	I say only that, so far as my amendment is concerned, it seeks to refer the matter back so that we can have further discussions about meeting the needs of smokers and non-smokers alike. That takes into account in particular the interests of our staff who, as has been observed, serve us very well, and whose health and welfare we wish to preserve.
	The risk factor of passive smoking at 700 possible deaths per year is very low compared even with the building industry—just one other industry outside. Accidents at work are a very serious matter, and much more serious than anything to do with passive smoking.
	I shall refer only to the noble Lord, Lord Peston. The noble Lord insulted your Lordships' House.

Noble Lords: Oh!

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: Oh, yes, indeed he did. He suggested that noble Lords are a crowd of crazies and that nothing in his wildest dreams could be said except in this place. Therefore, he insulted your Lordships' House.

Lord Peston: My Lords, I must object. There are standards to be met, as the noble Lord knows because he has been here longer than I have. In no way have I today or at any other time insulted your Lordships' House. In fact, as he well knows, no one stands up more for your Lordships' House on this and other matters than I do. Therefore I must ask him to withdraw what is undoubtedly an unconscionable remark.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I most certainly will not withdraw it. The noble Lord suggested that in this House, in this place, you would hear all sorts of crazy things that you would not hear elsewhere. I have no intention of withdrawing my accusation that he insulted Members of this House and the House itself. What is more, he insulted the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross, who has been around this issue and studied it over a long period of time. The noble Lord also insulted me by suggesting that I had not studied and taken note of the issue of passive smoking, which I have done over a long time.
	I hope that noble Lords will support my amendment. As I said, I believe that this debate has shown that the matter needs to be reconsidered. I commend the amendment to the House.

On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 1) shall be agreed to?
	Their Lordships divided: Contents, 41; Not-Contents, 116.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.

Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I should inform the House that if Amendment No. 2 is agreed, whether amended by Amendment No. 2A or not, I cannot call Amendments Nos. 3 to 8.

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: My Lords, in the light of noble Lords' having supported this important report, and to give a Christmas present to those who smoke, I have decided not to move my amendment.

[Amendment No. 2 not moved.]
	[Amendment No. 2A, as an amendment to Amendment No. 2, not moved.]

Lord Palmer: My Lords, I love getting early Christmas presents. In the light of what my noble friend said, I also wish not to move Amendment No. 3.

[Amendment No. 3 not moved.]
	[Amendments Nos. 4 to 6 not moved.]

Baroness Howarth of Breckland: rose to move, as an amendment to the Motion standing in the name of the Chairman of Committees, at end to insert "but with the omission of paragraph 14(b), and with the insertion after paragraph 13(j) of the following new paragraph—
	"13(k)the Peers' Guest Room.""

Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, I beg to move.

On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 7) shall be agreed to?
	Their Lordships divided: Contents, 88; Not-Contents, 53.

Resolved in the affirmative, and amendment agreed to accordingly.

Lord Palmer: My Lords, since tabling my Amendment No. 8, I understand that smoking on the Terrace and the Cholmondeley Room—and, indeed the Attlee Room—is always at the discretion of the host Peer giving the reception. In light of the fact that my noble friend did not move her amendment, I shall not move my amendment, on the understanding that I have correctly interpreted what happens.

[Amendment No. 8 not moved.]
	On Question, Motion, as amended, agreed to.

Environmental Information Regulations 2004

Lord Whitty: rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 27 October be approved [33rd Report from the Joint Committee, Session 2003–04; 23rd Report from the Merits Committee, Session 2003–04].

Lord Whitty: My Lords, there have been environmental information regulations in the UK since 1992. Under those regulations the public gained a statutory right of access to environmental information held by public authorities and certain other bodies. We are now replacing those environmental information regulations in response both to the Aarhus Convention and the EU Directive of 2003–04 on public access to environmental information. The new regulation clarifies and enhances the 1992 regulations.
	The revised regulations provide a shorter time for authorities to respond. They require proactive dissemination of information, they make the public interest test explicit and they state that there will be a presumption in favour of disclosure. They give enforcement powers to the Information Commissioner.
	The new regulations do not add new burdens to public authorities. Under both the new and the old regulations, all organisations which perform public functions in relation to the environment are included—including utility companies and waste contractors—creating a comprehensive system which covers all environmental information which affects peoples' lives. Authorities cannot evade these regulations by contracting out their environmental functions to someone else.
	So why have we required these new regulations? In 1998 we signed the Aarhus Convention, which aims to strengthen the role of members of the public and environmental organisations in protecting and improving the environment for the benefit of future generations. By recognising citizens' environmental rights to information and to participation in justice it aims to promote greater accountability and transparency. The convention aims to allow members of the public greater access to the information held by public authorities, including active dissemination of information to the public. The European Community has also signed the Aarhus Convention and has adopted several instruments to apply the convention across the Community, one of which is the EU directive on public access to environmental information, which the UK is required to transpose by February 2005. The new regulations transpose that directive into UK law, as well as ensuring that we can ratify the Aarhus Convention.
	We have ensured that the regulations will work in harmony with the Freedom of Information Act, to make it easier for public authorities to implement and easier for the public to understand. Hence, we are using the same timescale to respond to requests as is contained in the Freedom of Information Act—that is, 20 working days for most requests; the same requirements for handling requests regarding advice, assistance and the format; and the same Information Commissioner to oversee the regime.
	The new regulations encourage authorities to make information routinely available on websites, where possible, and require proactive dissemination of information. Information that is readily available online reduces the need for formal requests. Most requests will be free to the applicant. For freedom of information authorities we will recommend use of that approach to charging. Only if the amount of work involved exceeds the appropriate limit—£600 for central government and £450 for local government—will the authority charge a reasonable sum for the request. For other public authorities, any charge must also be reasonable. Where there is a charge, it will be no more than the cost of supplying the information, except where a market-based charge is necessary to ensure the continued supply of information.
	I am confident that these regulations will improve policy making and the democratic process by extending access to facts and analysis behind those policies. As well as building greater trust between citizens and public authorities, better access to information also supports a culture of better and informed public engagement in civic matters. That helps to improve the quality of life for all UK citizens.
	The priority now is to integrate sustainable development into decision-making. To achieve that, it is important that everyone is able to access environmental information, and the Government are committed to improving that access. These regulations fulfil that commitment and will enable the UK to progress its aims of transparency, public participation and access to justice. Therefore, I hope that your Lordships will join me in supporting the regulations. I beg to move.
	Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 27 October be approved [33rd Report from the Joint Committee, Session 2003–04; 23rd Report from the Merits Committee, Session 2003–04].—(Lord Whitty.)

Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and, indeed, the Government for the advance information and explanatory documents relating to these regulations and, now, for the Minister's explanation of them. They are a welcome update in principle and, generally speaking, in detail but inevitably I want to ask just one or two questions.
	Regulation 4(4)(b), which concerns the dissemination of environmental information, states:
	"The information . . . shall include . . . facts and analyses of facts which the public authority considers relevant and important in framing . . . environmental policy proposals".
	My question is: how far does that extend? One comes to the crunch in all this in Regulation 19, which concerns the offence of altering records with intent to prevent disclosure. There, one finds that any person to whom this regulation applies—in other words, anyone who alters or defaces records or who erases, destroys or conceals records—is liable to a very severe fine.
	The specific question that needs to be asked relates to e-mail. The Government recently issued what I would describe as a request around government departments that the delete button be applied to e-mails more than three months old. There will certainly be occasions when facts and analyses of facts in this area will be dealt with by e-mail. If the general practice which the Government appear to be advocating spreads across public authorities in this area, it seems to me that people will inevitably—perhaps inadvertently but under some kind of guidance—become liable to an offence under Regulation 19. I am sure that that was not the Government's intention when they issued their advice on e-mails.
	With regard to my e-mails, I press the delete button daily and then weekly to get rid of the whole lot and keep my computer relatively clear. That seems to be an entirely sensible practice. Of course, I am not a Minister. I am not taking relevant decisions and I am not in the government department where officials act on such matters, but I believe that this is a very serious issue. If what the Government appear to be advocating ultimately becomes general practice throughout public authorities, the question will arise of the compatibility of government practice and the regulations. Therefore, I should welcome some response from the Minister on that specific matter.
	The other issue on which I wish to speak briefly concerns charging. We know that there is a fairly high level of cost and value which has to be exceeded before charges can be made. But the difficult question is: how is that charge to be controlled? It is such charge as the authority itself considers reasonable. What role, if any, does the commissioner have or will the Minister make the decision via his code of practice, which the commissioner will presumably have to administer; and, if so, what advice will the Minister give? There needs to be some distinction in this area.
	It is one thing to write to an authority asking it to supply the information, but what happens if someone goes into an authority, to where all the information is available for the public to see, studies the information, decides that he needs a copy, but there are no copying facilities in that room? Will there simply be access to the information where the records are kept, or will there also be facilities for members of the public to take copies, which they may need to take away so that they can carry out further work? Presumably many inquiries will relate to particular difficulties in cases with which individuals are concerned.
	Those are the two serious issues on which I have questions for the Minister. Subject to those, my party is content that these regulations are here and we certainly do not wish to prevent them coming into force or to hold them up.

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: My Lords, we on these Benches welcome the opening up of environmental information. We often ask for clarification on what will be in the public domain. With that in mind, I ask the Minister under what Acts will exemptions be made to the requirement to provide such information? I have in mind the recently passed uranium enrichment regulations that would, no doubt, provide for prior rights to preclude the public from knowing what is happening in some nuclear establishments as regards the environment. He may not have that list to hand, but I would be grateful if he could write to me saying what is excluded from these regulations by way of Acts of Parliament.
	My second point concerns a matter on which his department has had some discussion. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify the position. What effect does the Minister believe that these regulations would have on local record centres, particularly with regard to the very valuable work that they do in collecting information about biodiversity? I am sure that the Minister will recall that last year the information on farmland birds, issued by the Government, contained some gaps. It was explained to me that all the information about bird numbers, on which Defra relies, is collected by volunteers and because of the foot and mouth disease crisis, they had not been able to supply as much data as usual.
	What impact does the Minister believe that these regulations will have on the volunteers, who belong to a voluntary society and who collect the data which are collated by the local record centre? I want to highlight to the Minister a number of areas under threat. It is possible that there could be a breakdown of trust between the volunteers and local record centres in relation to particularly sensitive species—for example, rare orchids or rare birds nesting. The volunteers may believe that the information should not be widely available to the public, whereas the record centres may be obliged to put it in the public domain if requested by egg collectors. Perhaps the Minister will address that issue.
	Local record centres depend heavily on volunteer input, and they cannot afford to pay for much of the information. I believe that their funding has not been increased, even in line with what was recommended by the Commons committee that considered the matter in 2000. That committee recommended that for local record centres to fulfil their obligations under the new biodiversity strategy, which the Government brought in, they would need increased funding. I do not believe that that recommendation has ever been acted on. Yet again the Government are bringing in albeit welcome regulations, but without local record centres, which play such a vital role in supplying biodiversity information to the Government as well as to the public, having a reliable idea about their future funding.
	Those are my concerns. Much of how these regulations will work will still be left to guidance. I believe that the Minister's department has had meetings with the National Biodiversity Network. I should be very grateful for some idea of the outcome of those meetings and whether the network is indeed happy with the current situation.

Lord Hunt of Chesterton: My Lords, I welcome this document which I was reading this morning. I declare an interest in having used a lot of environmental data, as chairman of an environmental company and of an NGO—ACOPS—and as an academic.
	I believe that the UK scientific and technological world in environmental work is second to none. Indeed, part of the reason for that is because environmental data are widely available in the UK. The position is considerably better than in some countries in Europe. So my first point is whether the kind of policy that is set out in this document will be the same in other European countries. In fact, it would be very interesting to have an independent review of the availability of the environmental data in the UK in comparison with other European countries.
	My second point relates to a specific element of this document. It contains a clause which refers to a point made earlier about transparency of communications within the public authorities providing the data. One of the most important points to understand in an organisation producing data is how the data are calculated. These are internal calculations and are more transparent in the UK than elsewhere, but it should still be reasonable to ask how, for example, certain levels of pollution are calculated or, indeed, how wind speeds were calculated. Sometimes there is frustration about that level of transparency.
	My third point also comes back to the points made earlier about the question of costs. Having been the chief executive of a government agency, which had to make a profit, I know a little about that and the question of the profit. Progressive views in the UK have meant that the charges made by many government agencies in the UK are lower than those of our European colleagues. That is a difficulty.
	However, there is an issue. I gather from the document that this rather ticklish area, which in the past may have been looked at by the DTI through its intellectual property organisation or by the Treasury which has also produced many documents on the levels of profitability of government agencies, will now be in the hands of the Information Commissioner. How will that person interact with these other government bodies and will there be some more uniform policy? At the moment the latest word that I have seen comes from the Treasury.
	What will be the staff of the Information Commissioner? He will be an important person running an important body. Will he or she have scientific staff and how will they work with these other government agencies? The blanket statement that "intellectual property will be preserved" covers a broad area and a lot of people will want to pick at that. Is that going to be in the hands of the DTI or will it be in the hands of the Information Commissioner? Perhaps that point could be established.
	My final point is about the curious anomaly that environmental data are often made available, particularly through the government research councils, to researchers. But for some reason—perhaps just for economy—it is difficult to make those data available to undergraduates and students. Therefore, the availability of the environmental data to the educational world also needs to be considered.

Lord Whitty: My Lords, I am grateful for the general support for these regulations. I shall attempt to answer the questions raised. In the discussion of the dissemination and availability of information the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, raised the issue of public records and in particular of e-mails. Public records—this also relates to some of the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, about keeping public records—must be kept and not destroyed. That would include those on e-mail.
	The only destruction permissible would in any case be in the context of a document management process, including e-mail, that would have had to have been stated. That would have to include requirements to archive public records; it would also set out in what circumstances and timescale e-mails could be destroyed. That would not include the destruction of original records, of base data on which decisions were based or other information about decisions that had been made. So although episodic e-mails may be wiped out every three months, or even every three days, those on which decisions are based would be required to be kept, just as normal written documents would be.
	On charging and how it is controlled, which the noble Lord also raised, the Information Commissioner would consider how to do that, advising public authorities where he thinks their charging process unreasonable. The draft guidance will be subject to consultation. In the circumstances described by the noble Lord, where someone goes in to photocopy something the actual cost will be charged. There are exceptions to that only where the organisation itself charges for that information and its finances are based on its method of charging.
	On the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, about public records and biodiversity recording in particular, the regulations cover organisations only so far as they fulfil public functions or are under the control of public authorities. They therefore do not extend to voluntary groups or individuals who record biodiversity information. Voluntary groups will therefore not be covered, but recording centres and organisations who are legally responsible for collecting information will be covered. However, there will be no requirement on them to issue information that is currently protected. Exceptions may be used to withhold information, such as the habitat of a rare species of bird, which we would not want to be in the public arena.
	The recording centres themselves and the National Biodiversity Network, to which the noble Baroness referred, aim to disseminate information wherever possible in any case, and are committed to doing that responsibly, withholding information only where it is in the public interest to do so. The regulations will not make a significant difference to that.
	The noble Baroness asked which Acts of Parliament are exempt. No Acts of Parliament as such are exempt; Regulation 5(b) overrides all other legislation; but the other regulations provide some exceptions, including those for national security purposes. The phrases used are those used in other legislation concerning national security and commercially sensitive information.
	My noble friend Lord Hunt asked what happens in other EU countries. Other EU countries are also required to transpose the directive and most of them individually and all of them collectively through the EU are subscribers to the convention. Therefore, parallel arrangements will have to be set up in other EU countries, although I accept that some of them are starting from some way back concerning current availability of information.
	My noble friend and the noble Baroness also asked about resources and funding and the availability of information being limited by a lack of funding. There are no funding implications of the regulations because we intend to inculcate a culture change in the approach to how information that is there should be made available. That ought to be part of the normal process of the bodies' operations. The active dissemination of information should also be included, which may be a function that some public authorities do not currently carry out, but we assume that that can be done within existing budgets unless any particular problems arise.
	The whole point of the regulations is that the normal processes should subsume the need to make information available and accessible. If we can achieve that, other efficiencies will often emerge within public authorities in any case.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Electricity and Gas (Energy Efficiency Obligations) Order 2004

Lord Whitty: rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 10 November be approved [34th Report from the Joint Committee, Session 2003–04].

Lord Whitty: My Lords, I beg to move that the draft order be approved. It places an obligation on energy and gas suppliers to achieve targets for the promotion of improvements in household energy efficiency. Suppliers meet those targets by encouraging and assisting their household consumers to take up energy efficiency measures. Through the more efficient use of energy, consumers will be able to reduce fuel costs or enjoy greater comfort without increased costs.
	The order sets the basis for the next phase of the energy efficiency commitment (EEC) and is an important part of the general approach to the Government's energy efficiency targets, set out in the energy efficiency action plan. The obligation will run from 2005 to 2008 and will build on the current, successful three-year commitment, which ends in March next year.
	We have held extensive informal consultations with a wide range of stakeholders, and a formal consultation document was issued in May. The main aim of the next stage of the EEC is to make a significant contribution to the targets under our climate-change programme. We estimate that the EEC for 2005–08 will achieve carbon savings of around 0.7 million tonnes of carbon a year by 2010, the first target year. It will also give particular help to low-income consumers, who spend a larger proportion of their income on energy, by requiring suppliers to achieve at least 50 per cent of their energy savings in households in receipt of income support, disability benefits or tax or pension credits. That will also have the added benefit of contributing to the alleviation of fuel poverty, which is part of a wider action plan issued in November.
	The order sets out an overall obligation on electricity and gas suppliers of 130 fuel-standardised lifetime-discounted terawatt hours of energy savings. It is a challenging target, at about twice the level of the current EEC, but it is achievable and will help to achieve our wider targets.
	We recognise the problem of overcoming householder apathy and creating demand for energy efficient products. We are considering ways to promote stronger consumer demand, including campaigns by key players such as the Energy Saving Trust. We have recently given the trust an extra £3 million to promote energy efficiency.
	The cost of meeting the obligation will fall on suppliers rather than consumers. However, we expect that, even if they were to pass costs on in full to their customers, they would amount to no more than an average of around £9 a year for the three years of the programme—about 20p a week. In any case, suppliers may absorb some of the costs themselves. Those costs are outweighed by a range of direct and indirect benefits. We expect the average ongoing financial benefit for consumers, in their bills, to be over £15 a year for the lifetime of the measures, which in some cases could be up to 40 years. In addition, there are wider environmental and social benefits.
	Ofgem is responsible for the administration of the commitment. The order provides the framework for Ofgem to set the targets. Ofgem will also be responsible for enforcement. The apportionment of the overall target between individual suppliers will be on the basis of their customer numbers. As we do not wish to raise barriers to smaller suppliers entering the market, the order exempts those with fewer than 50,000 customers.
	We are keen to encourage in each sector the development of the best new energy efficient technologies. We also support the development of energy services as a potentially effective means of improving energy efficiency. The order, therefore, provides incentives for innovative products, such as micro-CHP and energy service action. The order also gives further flexibility to suppliers by allowing them to trade with each other all or part of their energy efficiency targets.
	We intend to monitor the continuing development of the EEC. Ofgem is required to report annually, and we are committed to extending the commitment beyond this phase, from 2008 to 2011. We will review the target before then. I hope that the House will accept the importance and desirability of the order and vote to support it.
	Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 10 November be approved [34th Report from the Joint Committee, Session 2003–04].—(Lord Whitty.)

Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, again, this set of regulations is welcome, as is anything that works towards better energy efficiency or economy. I must admit that I still have some difficulty with them. Unless one is an expert, these seven pages are couched in such terms that they are incomprehensible. We should attempt to write this sort of regulation in language that ordinary people can read and understand, although I accept that for the aficionados there is inevitably a complexity when dealing with a subject of this sort.
	To a degree, the Minister has already responded to my next problem, which was to decide whether the regulations were directed at energy efficiency or more at attempting to find solutions to fuel poverty. There is no doubt that the specification, shall we say, that has been drawn up is being biased within the general community. That is fair enough. I accept that fuel poverty is a particular problem for a large group of people. Anything that alleviates it is desirable. Coming from a Government who resisted attempts in the Housing Bill to raise the fuel efficiency of buildings, it is good to see a conversion.
	I have a technical problem, which no doubt the Minister will be able to explain, with the words "fuel-standardised" on the first page of the regulations. We say that a fuel-standardised sum is the amount of actual saving multiplied by different factors depending on the particular fuel that is the source of the energy.
	My first problem arises where the source of the energy is electricity. In my experience, which is somewhat limited, electricity has to be generated. I have never heard of electricity generating electricity—I think that the only free electricity floating around is lightning. So I am rather fascinated about why that is included as a source of energy in the first place. No doubt the Minister will be able to explain that.
	But that has of course what I would call the strongest multiplier against it, which means that economy is achieved where the source of energy as electricity had the least effect, counting against the amount that has to be saved. That multiplier reduces the saving that is counted in the fuel-standardised context to 0.2 per unit saved. Where the source of the energy is coal, gas or oil, there are lesser multipliers.
	Given that a great deal of energy supplied still comes from nuclear, which does not generate carbon dioxide at all, one could have an argument that because there is no carbon dioxide generated, fuel economy is not required except to the extent that we would like to reduce the total capacity of generation. But if we seek long-term environmental benefits and ways to tackle the problems of carbon dioxide emissions and global warming, we would not introduce a multiplier for coal at all. We should offer every possible incentive to shut down coal generation. These factors require further justification. Again, when the Minister responds to this brief debate, will he be able to explain the background to the factors set out on the first page of these regulations? I suspect that he may prefer to write to me in more detail.
	I turn now to the inconsistencies of the background policy, in which one finds an immediate nonsense that has not been thought through. The rate of VAT on fuel is 5 per cent, while on insulation it is 17.5 per cent. That is a perverse disincentive. However, I accept that it has nothing to do with these regulations and that we are stepping out of the field of the order before us and into the field of general policy.
	Not the least of the difficulties of encouraging householders to take a proper interest in energy saving that the Minister has himself explained is their reluctance to do so under the present circumstances. We shall not solve the problem without going far wider than the specific issues addressed in these regulations. I hope that the Minister will accept that there is a wider context in which these matters have to be addressed. Perhaps he will give me an assurance that the Government are also considering the far more fundamental issues, otherwise it will be difficult to ensure that these regulations are successful. I appreciate that the regulations will work because the incentive is placed on the suppliers, who cannot afford to fail. But the task would be made much easier if the consumer himself were given greater incentives.

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: My Lords, I should start by declaring an interest. I have just installed a solar water-heating system on my roof, having benefited from a government grant to cover one-quarter of the cost. I am grateful that we were able to take advantage of such a grant. The system is so incredibly efficient that if the sun is out for only two or three hours, we have ample hot water to meet our needs all day. All noble Lords are welcome to come and have a look at the system and, indeed, to take a bath in our solar heated water.
	I, too, warmly welcome the order as it marks an important step in achieving energy efficiency in the home. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, I have benefited from being able to consult my noble friend Lord Ezra. Unfortunately he is unable to be in his place this afternoon, but he translated the order excellently for me. I acknowledge that the Government published accompanying Explanatory Notes, but I found my noble friend's interpretation infinitely more helpful and brief. Indeed, the notes would have benefited from being divided into explanations addressed specifically to the order, followed by background information. At present the notes are helpful but slightly confusing, given that some of them do not relate directly to the order.
	Both my noble friend Lord Ezra and I would like to welcome in particular the innovative action to be taken on micro-generation. We are pleased to see that.
	I have one or two questions for the Minister. What is the Government's current energy savings target for the domestic sector by 2010? Is it 5 million tonnes of carbon, or 4.2 million tonnes? I ask that because I think both figures have been mentioned. Although my noble friend Lady Maddock has not asked me to speak on her behalf, I know that she would want the point to be made that it is regrettable that the Government resisted an amendment to the Housing Bill which would have introduced a more substantial provision than that contained in the Act.
	Although we welcome the order it does not mean that we have not noticed that departments other than the Minister's own, Defra, seem constantly to be watering down efforts to achieve energy efficiency and sustainability.
	The measures under the order will, if successful, contribute savings of 0.7 million tonnes of carbon by 2010. Do the Government have any further proposals on how the remainder will be achieved? Is the Minister aware of any further measures that may be introduced in the near future?
	I ask the Minister, again, about the issues that we debated at length during the passage of the Energy Bill. He has just referred to an extra £3 million being given to the Energy Saving Trust, but I remind him that the services offered by the trust are not very widespread or well known on the streets of Britain. Indeed, from my own experience of buying a solar water-heating system, I know that it is difficult to access advice about systems, suppliers and installers. I am sure that the Minister will refer me to the DTI website, but not everyone has access to a computer or the ability to use it. Many of those in particular need of advice—for instance, those suffering from fuel poverty—are exactly the people for whom website access is difficult.
	I return to my request that far more information on energy saving should be given out in places where people habitually and easily go—for instance, pubs, supermarkets and doctors' surgeries, which I know contain some information on energy saving but not nearly enough. I ask the Minister to consider whether the Energy Saving Trust should look at more innovative ways of reaching the general public.
	The Government estimated that fuel poverty affected about 3 million households in 2001. Given that there has been a substantial rise in the price of energy, what is the Minister's estimate of the number of households that are now in fuel poverty? This should, of course, affect the resources that the Government are putting into this area of work.
	I noticed an interesting paragraph in the explanatory notes to the order which perhaps answers the query of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith. It states:
	"Energy improvement is defined as the benefit to the household from an energy efficiency measure, either from lower bills, or from increased comfort".
	That is a sentiment with which I entirely agree, although it does not need to be "or" and could be "and". It is an important point to bear in mind.
	Finally, I should like to put on record how pleased I am at the Ofgem decision last week on transmission price controls for renewable generation. The price controls were last set in 2000. In 2006, prices will reflect the cost of transmission—particularly from distant parts of Scotland—of energy generated through renewable sources. I welcome Ofgem's move on that front.
	We welcome the order and hope that the Government will take more action in this very important area of work.

Lord Whitty: My Lords, I am again grateful for the general support for the approach taken in the measure. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, claimed that the order was incomprehensible, but I think that he made a fairly good fist of understanding it himself. There are some inevitabilities in the phraseology, but this phraseology is to be used by energy professionals and the supply companies. I also take note of the strictures of the noble Baroness on the explanatory notes, which we will look at.
	In relation the noble Lord's query about the purpose of this scheme, the prime purpose of the commitment is energy efficiency—or carbon saving, to be more precise—but the way in which that is delivered is skewed to have a social benefit, which is why the 50 per cent provision is there. It therefore makes a secondary contribution to the fuel poverty targets in the same way as measures such as Warm Front, which are primarily directed at fuel poverty, will also make a contribution towards energy efficiency. The number of fuel poor has come down significantly. Off the top of my head, I cannot remember the UK figure, but the number in England has now come down to about 1.2 million. We issued our fuel poverty strategy just a few weeks ago.
	The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, posed rather wider questions about taxation matters—on which I am not allowed to comment, but I take his point—and on the need to educate consumers. The noble Baroness returned to that in relation to the energy efficiency centres and other sources of information. Although I agree that they need a much higher profile, the EST's energy efficiency centres have been very successful and have had a big increase in the numbers of people taking their advice. All areas of advice and means of getting advice to households, particularly vulnerable households, on this front and on other aspects of the fuel poverty and energy efficiency programme are important and we need to step up awareness more generally.
	The noble Lord raised an issue relating to the definition of the fuel-standardised coefficients in paragraph 1(ii). We probably need the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, to explain it more simply and it may be that I should respond to the noble Lord's invitation to write, but, essentially, the factors are based on the relative carbon content of each of the sources of energy. That, in turn, is based on the Defra guidelines, which are set out in the company reporting guidance on greenhouse gas emissions. They are the same guidelines that are used elsewhere.

Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, how does the Minister explain the carbon content of electricity?

Lord Whitty: My Lords, the electricity coefficient is based on the sources of electricity. It therefore takes account of the relative carbon content of nuclear, coal, renewable and oil-based electricity. That is how we end up with that figure. However, I shall write direct to the noble Lord to set it out in more detail.
	I congratulate the noble Baroness on her successful solar water investment. I wish that there were more of them. I also welcome her indirect reference to the support of the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, for micro-generation. Regarding the general policy in relation to energy efficiency in the household sector, we have set the 4.2 million figure as the statutory target. The 5 million figure was referred to in the energy White Paper. As explained, it is feasible to achieve the 4.2 million figure on current policies.
	Although the overall energy efficiency target is now higher than at the time of the energy White Paper, the household factor is slightly lower. The reason is the one that the noble Baroness put her finger on: a number of people who have very effective energy efficiency measures in their houses will take greater comfort in greater warmth rather than save energy and money. That is the main reason for that reduction.
	I think that the noble Baroness was being a bit churlish not to accept that, in the end, we made some substantial amendments to the Bill to which she referred. Clearly, other measures are needed to support these regulations, both in relation to the decisions of consumers and energy efficiency measures in other sectors of the economy. These regulations are a major way in which the interface between the supply companies and the householder can make a significant contribution to energy efficiency and can ensure, whether they are fully aware of it or not, that householders adopt measures that deliver the 0.7 million tonnes of carbon saving that we expect from this measure. The other measures will complement it. Other developments on the regulatory front, with which noble Lords are familiar, will also help, as will programmes such as Warm Front, which are primarily directed at fuel poverty but have an energy efficiency benefit.
	I think that I have covered most of the points that have been raised.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 8 December be approved [3rd Report from the Joint Committee].

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, the regulations before you today implement EC Directive 2002/14/EC on informing and consulting employees. For the first time, employees in the UK will have a right to be informed and consulted on an ongoing basis about the changes and developments in the organisations they work for.
	The Government strongly support the objectives behind the directive. We want to see an end to employees hearing about job losses only from the media over breakfast or by text message. We want employees to feel valued, motivated and committed to the organisations they work for. Business will also benefit.
	For companies working in an increasingly competitive environment, involving employees in the business can help them to gain a competitive advantage.
	There is a good deal of evidence that the more people are genuinely involved and informed at work, the more committed they become. Business can benefit not just in reduced absenteeism and staff turnover but in higher levels of productivity, performance and customer satisfaction. Many businesses realise this and already have good employee communication policies in place. But we need such good practice to spread more widely in the UK.
	The regulations break new ground in that they are based on a framework agreed with the CBI and TUC. I am extremely pleased that we were able to reach an agreement in this way, and I pay tribute to the CBI and TUC.
	In agreeing the framework, we were guided by two key priorities—first, to ensure that employees have the right to be informed and consulted on management decisions affecting their future and, secondly, to do so in a way that avoids unnecessary burdens on business and provides flexibility.
	We know that no two companies are identical, so we agreed with the CBI and TUC that we would not impose a single, rigid model on all. Companies can tailor arrangements to suit their individual circumstances, as long as employees agree with them.
	The regulations implement the framework agreement. I shall briefly explain some of the key provisions. The regulations apply to undertakings in the UK with 50 or more employees. These form 3 per cent of firms, although they employ 75 per cent of employees. The regulations will be phased in, giving smaller firms longer to prepare, although the Government would encourage all organisations, whether or not covered by the legislation, to inform and consult their employees, as a matter of good practice.
	Regulation 7 gives employees the right to request formal information and consultation arrangements from their employer. Where at least 10 per cent of employees in an undertaking make a request, the employer will normally be required to initiate negotiations. If employees do not trigger the legislation in this way, the status quo will continue. However, if an undertaking already has a pre-existing agreement on information and consultation and a request for new arrangements is made by less than 40 per cent of employees, the employer may hold a ballot to determine whether the wider workforce endorses the request. It follows that where employers and employees are content with their current arrangements, the regulations do not force them to change anything.
	Regulation 9 allows for a combined ballot to be held where there is a pre-existing agreement covering a group of undertakings. Regulation 11 permits employers to initiate negotiations without waiting for an employee request. Where an employer is required to negotiate an information and consultation agreement, Regulation 14 sets out what steps have to be taken.
	Regulation 16 sets out what a negotiated agreement must contain and how it must be approved. Agreements must set out the circumstances in which the employees will be informed and consulted but specify neither the method, subject matter, frequency nor timing. It purposely leaves that to the employer and employees to decide, giving them the flexibility to agree arrangements best suited to them.
	Once arrangements are in place, information and consultation may take place through elected or appointed representatives, including trade union officials. However, communications can also take place directly with employees, if that is what they want.
	The standard information and consultation provisions in Part 4 apply only where negotiations have failed to lead to an agreement, or where an employer fails to initiate negotiations when required to do so. They oblige employers to inform and consult on specified matters in the way set out in Regulation 20. However, employers and information and consultation representatives are always free to reach a negotiated agreement at any time.
	Regulation 22 provides for complaints to the Central Arbitration Committee about the operation of a negotiated agreement or the standard information and consultation provisions. It also provides for an application to be made to the Employment Appeal Tribunal for a penalty of up to £75,000 where an employer has failed to comply with a negotiated agreement or the standard provision.
	Regulations 25 and 26 allow employers to protect confidential information.
	Part 8 provides protections for employees and rights to time off for representatives.
	The CAC has a very important role to play throughout the entire process, from taking decisions on the validity of employee requests, through to enforcing arrangements. ACAS also has a central role in conciliating, trying where possible to resolve any disputes.
	The rights I have outlined are without a doubt very important and their potential is significant. We have consulted widely and have already begun awareness raising, with many highly successful regional road shows and master classes. DTI guidance has also been produced and we are also grateful to ACAS for putting together good practice advice and training materials.
	But we want to do more than just raise awareness of these new rights. We want to encourage business, employees and unions to realise the benefits of a better informed and consulted workforce. The Government have high ambitions for the information and consultation legislation. Approached in the right way, it has the potential to cause culture change in workplaces throughout the UK. I beg to move.
	Moved, That the draft regulations laid before House on 8 December be approved [3rd Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Sainsbury of Turville.)

Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, these draft regulations are 33 pages long, followed by a five-page explanatory memorandum, and are accompanied by 39 pages of a regulatory impact assessment. Before I go further, I must apologise for my voice. Inside my head, it sounds awful and I hope that it does not sound as bad to your Lordships.
	In that regulatory impact assessment, we have no fewer than 11 pages of tables setting out what are called,
	"the assumptions on staff resources and running costs",
	and,
	"the costs of introducing and running an I&C System".
	After those 11 pages of tables, there are two pages of so-called flow charts by which an employer can follow a tortuous route to find out whether his business is actually involved—and, if so, when and how.
	I invite your Lordships to look at pages 38 and 39 and perhaps those of you who can make head or tail of it might care to offer their services to what I imagine will be a large number of utterly bewildered medium-sized employers. I refer to medium-sized employers because the regulations apply only to businesses with more than 50 employees after 2008 and against larger employers between this coming April and April 2007. I thank the Minister for explaining them so carefully. It was easier than trying to wade through all those pages, but I am not sure how employers will manage to do so.
	Fortunately, 97 per cent of businesses in the United Kingdom have fewer than 50 employees and are therefore exempt from this burden. Nevertheless, with perhaps just 3 per cent of businesses which will be burdened by the regulations, the cost will be staggering. On the basis of the Government's own figures set out in the regulatory impact assessment, businesses will incur a total one-off cost of between £24 million and £53 million between 2005 and 2012.
	If that wide "guesstimate" is not wide enough, the ongoing running costs will reach between £20 million and £46 million each year—each year by 2012. I venture to suggest that our competitors in China and India, and those in other emerging nations, will not be faced with these totally unproductive and irrecoverable on-costs.
	In January of this year during the passage of the Employment Relations Bill, my honourable friend the Member for Eddisbury wrote:
	"It is unfortunate that against a backdrop of corporate profitability at its lowest level since 1993, and productivity which has halved under Labour, that the Government believes that it is its mandate to promote regulation rather than innovation".
	As we predicted, what is happening is that companies are to be forced to consult staff on the smallest every-day issues, which will be a waste of time for both employers and those employees who actually take part in the consultation. And to what end?
	After the consultation, the employer will still have to make his decision based purely on the commercial implications involved. As I have sat on these Benches, sometimes enduring the frustrations of being in opposition, I have watched with dismay how the Department of Trade and Industry, as it has grown, has become the regulator of British business instead of protecting it against a rising tide of stifling regulation. The Secretary of State, especially the present one, has indulged in unprecedented empire-building while her department's budget has ballooned to £8 billion.
	We on these Benches would have hoped that the objectives of these regulations could have been achieved by a less prescriptive route. That is not to say that we do not believe that the objectives of the regulations, in making it easier for employees to know what is happening—not simply having it thrown upon them—is not a good one; it is, but there must be another means of doing it. In other words, there should be voluntary co-operation between both sides of industry, where appropriate. This massive hammer to crack a nut, with a one-size-fits-all set of regulations, disregards the needs of individual companies when different circumstances will inevitably prevail. However, I accept what the Minister said, that it is certainly wrong that on major matters of employment the employee should hear what is happening to him only at the very end.
	The Minister has commended these regulations to the House. We for our part will follow the usual custom of your Lordships' House, which is, notwithstanding our misgivings—we should have preferred the measures to be voluntary—that we shall certainly not oppose the passage of the regulations, and we certainly hope that they work well.

Lord Razzall: My Lords, it will come as no surprise to the Minister to learn that we on these Benches fundamentally disagree with virtually every word that the noble Baroness has just said. The Minister will remember that in the passage of the Employment Relations Bill, certainly in another place and I believe here as well, we pressed an amendment on the Government to try to expedite the introduction of these regulations. We fixed the date of 23 March 2005 as the time by which we wanted to mandate the Government to introduce the regulations. So the Minister has beaten the date, even in our amendment, by three months.
	We welcome these regulations. The Liberal Democrats, and the Liberal Party before the Liberal Democrats, has over the past 100 years advocated proposals of this nature. We believe that what has been wrong with so much of British industry has been an absence of consultation between management and workforce, and the "them and us" attitude. We feel that the regulations will go a long way to breaking down a lot of the traditional barriers in British industry. Would that this approach had existed 20 or 30 years ago, before a large element of the manufacturing industry in the UK disappeared. Nevertheless, in relation to those businesses in which manufacturing survives, we feel that the regulations are essential.
	There have been some very bad examples recently of workforces having termination of employment redundancies imposed on them without adequate consultation in advance. Academic studies from Warwick University demonstrate that across the board in British industry only a minority of UK companies even remotely, at the moment, match the requirements of the European Union directive and the regulations that flow from it. So we congratulate the Government on introducing the regulations and say all power to their elbow in this matter.

Lord Lea of Crondall: My Lords, I apologise for dashing in at the last minute to make this short contribution. Due to the timetable for the smoking debate I had to attend a meeting and then come to the Chamber.
	I declare an interest in that over many years I have worn two or three hats relevant to the subject that we are discussing. I was involved in discussions in Brussels on social dialogue. I hope that I can put the mind of the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, at rest to some extent. I think she will agree that this matter has involved employers' representatives at every stage. Indeed, one of the first things the Labour Government did in 1997 was to sign the Social Chapter. I remember meeting with Robin Cook in Brussels at that time when he was Foreign Secretary.
	The Social Chapter is not top of the pops with the party of the noble Baroness, Lady Miller. Nevertheless, it has produced three or four major reforms involving part-time workers, fixed-term contracts and this measure, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, implied, has been the subject of debate for 30 or 40 years. Should a worker have the right to representation vis-à-vis his employer? In TUC jargon that is rung one of the employment rights ladder. We have seen further developments in that regard in the past two or three years. I believe that from November of this year a provision of the Employment Act 2002 was brought into force with the result that every firm of any size must have a disciplinary procedure and every firm must have a grievance procedure. As I say, that is rung one.
	Rung three concerns what the Government did some three or four years ago regarding trade union recognition—where a majority of workers have voted for that—and terms and conditions of employment. I refer to the case for rung two—the one in the middle. Many questions involving pensions or training have not been included in the relevant mandatory list. However, rung two—the metaphor implies that you may go to rung three—is good news for many firms that have been faced with requirements regarding, for example, collective redundancy, but which have no ongoing machinery to deal with it. A push or a nudge is required to get that set up. How is that machinery to be set up? It does not happen in 24 hours. It requires a lot of thought, but people have had a lot of notice that these regulations would be brought into force. Everyone knows that agreement has been reached with employers in Brussels and in London between the TUC and the CBI.
	The measure is to be implemented in three stages. I do not know whether my noble friend would agree that only a small percentage of firms are covered by the measure, and that many small firms do not add up to many millions of workers. However, if everyone who was entitled to do so went down this track, some 70 per cent of the workforce would be covered by the measure. That is not an inconsiderable figure. The measure constitutes a red letter day in the history of industrial relations in this country. It is odd that a reform of such importance is being discussed in a short debate. However, that is the way that our parliamentary procedure works. I very much welcome the Government's determination to engage in dialogue once they had decided that this was the track down which they were going.
	Wearing my other hat as a member of the Central Arbitration Committee, I look forward to considering some of the tantalising questions about existing agreements and interpreting whether the new arrangements are satisfactory. We do not know how this will work in detail, but I am pretty confident that with the experience of the trade union recognition the Central Arbitration Committee will be able to play a constructive role for its part. I congratulate all those concerned on getting us to where we have got to so far.

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I am grateful for noble Lords' views. I will respond to a few points. I am pleased that as a whole we had general support from noble Lords on these issues. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, raised the question of competitiveness with China. We need to deal with that issue first. The wages in China are 5 per cent of what they are here. In many cases, the environmental and working conditions are still deplorable, though steps are being taken forward. We will not be able to compete with China, and we should not try to do so by reducing our costs and the way we treat workers to the level at which they are treated there. We will be able to do that only on the basis of innovation and moving into high value-added areas. That is where we must set our sights. The whole issue of information and consultation is relevant to that.
	The noble Baroness also raised the question of costs incurred by business through familiarisation with the legislation and implementation. Initially, there will be some costs arising from the new provisions on information and consultation, as made clear by the regulatory impact assessment, but we have chosen the least costly implementation option for implementing the directive. If you look at this against the ongoing costs of business, they are very small. If you take together the gross costs of all employment legislation introduced since 1997, it is around £4 per worker per week, and that includes all the benefits that go to workers. If you take just the administrative costs, we are talking about just 3 pence for each worker each week. That is not going to make a great deal of difference to the competitiveness of British industry.
	The noble Lord, Lord Lea, raised the question of people covered. The regulations, while they apply only to 3 per cent of all firms, cover 75 per cent of all the people employed in firms. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, raised the question of the length of the regulatory impact assessment. I am sure that if it had been shorter, the noble Baroness would have asked why it did not cover all the information that it needed to cover. Businesses do not need to read the regulatory impact assessment to understand how to comply with the legislation. The noble Baroness also raised the question of firms being required to consult on trivial issues. That is simply not the case; the directive is about strategic decisions affecting employment, although it will ultimately be a matter for employers and employees to agree on the issues they will inform and consult on.
	I also thank the noble Lords, Lord Lea and Lord Razzall, for their support for these regulations. They are important, and they can make a great difference to industrial relations. They are another important step in furthering the partnership agenda. The Government have listened to the views of consultees and produced regulations, in agreement with both the CBI and the TUC, which are flexible and which balance the rights and responsibilities of employees and employers. That is how it should be, and I commend the regulations to the House.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Regulatory Reform (Unsolicited Goods and Services Act 1971) (Directory Entries and Demands for Payment) Order 2004

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: rose to move, That the draft regulatory reform order laid before the House on 25 October be approved [32nd Report, Session 2003–04 from the Regulatory Reform Committee].

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, this regulatory reform order is brought forward under the Regulatory Reform Act 2001 by the Department of Trade and Industry. The Regulatory Reform (Unsolicited Goods and Services Act 1971) (Directory Entries and Demands for Payment) Order 2004 liberalises a code that applies to the authorisation of directory entries in the United Kingdom. That code is set out in the Unsolicited Goods and Services Act 1971, which I will refer to as the 1971 Act. The regulatory reform order reduces the burdens on legitimate directory publishers and advertisers in their directories, while maintaining protection for advertisers from rogue publishers.
	The order contains two elements. The first and most important element adds a new method of authorising an entry in a directory to the three methods specified in Section 3 of the 1971 Act. That is a simplified repeat procedure for repeat entries or for renewals of existing directory entries. The other change that we are making is to revoke the Unsolicited Goods and Services (Invoices etc) Regulations 1975. We are replacing them with subordinate provisions that simplify and update the regulations.
	By way of background, I should explain that the 1971 Act was introduced to stop scams operated by rogue or bogus directory publishers in the UK. Those scams were based around the practice of invoicing and demanding payments from businesses for entries in bogus directory publications to which they had not agreed. The 1971 Act combated the scams by setting out procedures for authorising directory entries that must be followed if the publisher is to be entitled to payment, as well as making it an offence to demand payment without having a reasonable belief of being entitled to the payment.
	The Act also placed significant burdens on both legitimate directory publishers and advertisers. In most circumstances, the Act requires written formalities to be entered into and an exchange of paperwork or e-mails. That is regardless of whether there is a long-term business relationship or whether an entry is simply being renewed from one issue of a directory to the next. Such formalities are unnecessary where an advertiser is already doing business with the publisher, so is therefore well informed of the service offered, and the entry is in many ways simply a roll-over of the existing entry.
	The impetus for this regulatory reform order has come from the legitimate directory publishing industry, and in particular the Directory and Database Publishers Association. It has for a long while been concerned about the burdens that the Act placed on the legitimate UK directory publishing industry. The Government also undertook to simplify the 1971 Act in the 1999 White Paper, Modern Markets: Confident Consumers. The order is the result. Subject to approval by Parliament, it will introduce a new simplified procedure for approving repeat entries or renewal of existing entries.
	That will save advertisers and publishers alike a lot of time and unnecessary paperwork and red tape when there is an existing business relationship and no substantive change in the new entry, or when the new entry is an improvement on the old. It will remove most of the unnecessary costs to business and administrative burdens in the 1971 Act, while maintaining the necessary protections. The authorisation requirements set out in Section 3 of the 1971 Act will be retained for initial or first-time entries in a directory publication.
	We are also simplifying and updating the requirements formerly in the Unsolicited Goods and Services (Invoices etc) Regulations 1975, to ensure that those requirements can be satisfied by electronic as well as paper documents. That is also necessary to meet the United Kingdom's obligations under the European e-commerce directive. We are not removing the protections set out in the regulations, but updating them for the electronic age.
	The order will apply to England, Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland has parallel legislation and will be making changes to its order.
	The draft order was subject to a full consultation process from March to June 2003. That consultation was on both elements of the regulatory reform order that I have described, as well as a third proposal that was to introduce a new method for authorising initial directory entries over the telephone. There was general support for all three proposals, although the Office of Fair Trading did not support the proposed telephone authorisation.
	The proposals have been closely scrutinised by respective parliamentary scrutiny committees, with their responses noted. The House of Lords Select Committee on Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform did not consider that the proposal to allow telephone authorisation met the necessary protection test. It recommended that it should be amended to strengthen the protection of business against "rogue publishers". It concluded that, apart from that, the proposed regulatory reform order was an appropriate use of the 2001 Act and met its requirements. I thank members of that Select Committee for the time they spent scrutinising the proposals and for recommending them to the House.
	The committee in the other place also concluded that the proposal for telephone authorisation did not meet the necessary protection test. It recommended that the proposal be omitted from the order. The committee also recommended that the second proposal be amended to require that documents which were not intended as demands for payment should continue to bear the precise wording of the statements in the 1975 regulations. The wording of these statements is,
	"this is not a demand for payment. There is no obligation to pay. This is not a bill".
	Subject to these amendments, the committee recommended that the draft order be laid before the House.
	The Department of Trade and Industry has made the amendments requested by both committees. It has omitted the proposal for telephone authorisation from the order and included the requirement for the three statements to be included in any invoice or other document not to be regarded as asserting a right to payment. Both committees have now unanimously recommended that the order be approved. I beg to move.
	Moved, That the draft regulatory order laid before the House on 25 October be approved [32nd Report, Session 2003–04 from the Regulatory Reform Committee].—(Lord Sainsbury of Turville.)

Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, I thank the Minister for explaining the order. We support it. Unsolicited directory entries are an absolute pest. These include fictitious entries in directories that either are never published or, if they are, have minimum circulation to disinterested recipients. Not to put too fine a point on it, it is nothing less than a form of confidence trickery.
	The problem particularly affects small businesses, where there is no adequate system for the authorisation of payment for invoices, which then may be settled by an unsuspecting book-keeper. They also sometimes catch larger organisations where payment is authorised simply because the person who actually opens the bill assumes, wrongly, that someone must have ordered the entry. The explanations given by the Government for the new order refer to, "disreputable directory publishers", or "rogue publishers".
	Let us not mince words, we are talking about criminal crookery—very bad behaviour indeed. The scam has hitherto been dealt with by the Unsolicited Goods and Services Act 1971, as amended by the 1975 Act. As someone who, when those Acts were passed, ran a mail order company which operated in the same way as a book club, I remember very well how careful I was not to infringe either of those pieces of legislation. My final longstop regarding a customer who claimed not to have ordered something was either to tell them to keep it free of charge, or to send it back at my expense. That is how it should be with reputable directory publishers. Just cancel the charge. After all, what has the entry cost them to insert? Nothing, or practically nothing.
	This legislation is designed to protect the unsuspecting and perhaps the plain careless against such crooks. This amendment to the legislation has received the most careful scrutiny by the separate regulatory reform committees of both Houses, who should be congratulated on performing their duties so effectively. Similarly, it is gratifying to see that the DTI has taken on board the unanimous objections of both committees to the possibility of permitting the publisher to secure repeat entries by telephone, which is clearly open to abuse by unscrupulous operators. Many of these fraudsters operate from abroad and from accommodation addresses. This puts them beyond the reach of the DTI and the police.
	If, therefore, I have any reservations about these regulations, it might be that they do not provide for three essential sanctions. First, since in the end, to recover payment, the publisher will have to go to the United Kingdom courts and the defendant will be compelled to go to the expense and trouble of defending the case, I hope that the Lord Chancellor might amend the Court Rules and require a claimant to certify that the claim does not infringe the legislation. This will impose a burden of vigilance on the claimant's solicitors, although it will still not affect cases where the claimant acts in person.
	Secondly, I should have liked a clear statement that debts incurred by unauthorised directory entries are irrecoverable at law. I realise that that is already implicit in the existing legislation—the Minister will probably tell me that. But spelling it out to the perpetrators of this type of fraud and reassuring the victims could not do any harm.
	Lastly, I hope that some form of voluntary early warning system can be developed between the DTI and the banks to head off the transfer of funds to these criminals. It is not, of course, the responsibility of the banks, but, presumably, they are also interested in protecting their customers from fraud.
	As I have said, the order has received the most careful scrutiny and the department has listened to the representations it has received from many quarters. It is in keeping with what is needed by publishers and advertisers alike and we most certainly support the order.

Lord Razzall: My Lords, on this occasion I entirely agree with the comments of the noble Baroness. We, too, support the order. I shall not rehearse the problems to which both the Minister and the noble Baroness referred regarding scams if for no other reason than that, first, it has been said before and, secondly, one would not want to encourage such an activity by giving the detail of the scams to people who might not otherwise be aware of them.
	We were concerned, as I believe were the noble Baroness and organisations such as the Office of Fair Trading, about the original proposals on telephone authorisation. I think that the Minister has now accepted the alterations on the basis of recommendations from the relevant committee that deals with the matter. However, I suspect that the outstanding issue in relation to the scams to which the noble Baroness referred is that many of them originate from overseas. When the Minister responds, perhaps he can indicate whether the Government have given any further thought to how that matter can be dealt with.

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness and the noble Lord for their support for this legislation and, in particular, I thank the noble Baroness for her passionate support.
	With regard to the international position, the vast majority of scams in the business directory field operate outside the UK. These proposals do not, and cannot, seek to regulate the activities of directory publishers, bogus or otherwise, who operate from other European countries or overseas. The best way to combat such scams is through cross-border co-operation between enforcement bodies and prosecution under the laws of the state concerned.
	There are some cases where that has occurred. One well known scam was that concerning the Barcelona-based European City Guide. The OFT sought the co-operation of the Catalan authority under Catalan law on misleading advertising. The court ruled that the European City Guide was to be temporarily shut down for one year and fined 300,000 euros for its deceitful advertising. In another case, the Liechtenstein authority shut down the Tour and Travel Guide because its business practices were injurious to the state in accordance with its law. Therefore, it is possible to take cross-border action on this matter. In addition, Section 3(1) of the Act states that a purchaser is not liable to pay and that he can, in fact, recover the payment for an unauthorised entry.
	I am very grateful for the contributions to this short debate and commend the order to the House.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Gulf War Illnesses

Lord Morris of Manchester: rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what consideration they have given to the Report of the Independent Public Inquiry on Gulf War Illnesses, conducted by the Lord Lloyd of Berwick.
	My Lords, I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have joined me for this, as it were, finale before the Christmas adjournment. Clearly there must, and will, be other opportunities to consider the Lloyd report and at more length; but Peers who wanted to be here with us, had that been possible, well understood the timeliness now of a first look at the outcome of an inquiry born and bred in your Lordships' House.
	I have interests to declare—not pecuniary—as Honorary Parliamentary Adviser to the Royal British Legion, as Vice-President of the War Widows Association, as a co-opted member of the United States Congressional Committee of Inquiry into Gulf War Illnesses, and as the instigator of the inquiry to whose groundbreaking report this debate calls attention.
	I am much indebted to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, for accepting my suggestion that he should conduct the inquiry and most warmly congratulate him on a report of huge importance to thousands of men and women now in broken health—many of them terminally ill—who were prepared to give their lives in the service of this country and to the dependants of those who did so.
	No one was more fitted or better qualified to conduct the inquiry than the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd. Scrupulously fair and balanced in its judgment, his report's conclusions are presented with excelling clarity and a relentless and compelling logic. Its purpose is not to apportion blame but to end deadlock and, by unravelling truth, to let right be done.
	Other distinguished lawyers describe the Lloyd report as a work of sustained forensic brilliance. By stricken veterans and the bereaved families, it is hailed as a triumph of social concern over official indifference: a treatise of transparent integrity and humanity.
	The wide acclaim won by the report, both here and abroad—nowhere more than in the United States—reflects high credit on the legal profession in this country. As a lawyer himself, I am sure my noble friend Lord Bach will want to acknowledge today the extent of the noble and learned Lord's achievement.
	For my part I also want to record deep appreciation of the invaluable contributions of Sir Michael Davies, known to and immensely respected by all of us here as former Clerk of the Parliaments, and of Dr Norman Jones, emeritus consultant physician at St Thomas's Hospital, who served the MoD with distinction in the period immediately following the conflict. Their unwavering commitment to the inquiry added powerfully to its impact.
	Vijay Mehan too has my admiration for his crucially important administrative role. Without his dedication, as the report says, the inquiry could never have gone forward. I pay tribute also today to the Royal British Legion—notably Brigadier Ian Townsend, Colonel Terry English and Frances Hoy—for their abiding constancy in pressing the case for an inquiry. Without their commitment the inquiry would never have been conceived.
	How then did it come about? It was at the Legion's 1997 annual conference that an independent public inquiry into Gulf War veterans' illnesses was first called for. The call was unanimously renewed year after year; but the Government, while stating that their mind was not closed to an inquiry, had repeatedly resisted one. Ministers remained unconvinced that it would help and time was not ripe. Only through research, they said, were the causes of Gulf War illnesses likely to be established. Yet 14 years on, veterans with medically unexplained illnesses were still locked in what the Legion described as "a long hard battle" to have them accepted as service-related. Of Gulf War widows, the Legion added:
	"They would have been better treated had their husbands been in the US and not British armed forces".
	On 5 February of this year the call for an inquiry was strongly reinforced in a letter I received from Stephen Irwin QC, who is chairman of the Bar Council, and other lawyers with a close interest in Gulf War illnesses. They urged me to draw the Prime Minister's attention to the worsening plight of Gulf veterans in the wake of the collapse of a class action based on negligence and/or breach of statutory duty that was found to be, "not currently viable".
	They stated also that,
	"science has not explained their illnesses",
	and concluded by requesting the Prime Minister to institute,
	"a full public review of the position of veterans, to instigate a process of conciliation . . . and to make good by ex-gratia payments the deficiencies of the war pensions scheme".
	Their letter prompted me to make one further, but unsuccessful, plea to the Prime Minister to institute an inquiry and then to consult widely on the possibility of finding a retired High Court judge to conduct an independent public inquiry.
	In a public statement on 14 June I announced that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, as a former High Court judge and Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, had agreed to fill that role; and also announced his terms of reference. The inquiry's report addresses, first, the MoD's refusal to admit that veterans' illnesses are related to their service in the Gulf conflict. Their pensions are being paid only because of a legal obligation to do so. For the MoD cannot prove the illnesses are not related to service in the Gulf.
	As the report says, the veterans now want above all else a clear recognition by the MoD that they are ill because they served in the Gulf. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, finds them entitled to that recognition, for which he presents an unanswerable case.
	The next question addressed by the inquiry concerned the nature of veterans' illnesses. In the years after the conflict, many veterans were told, both here and in the United States, that they were not physically ill. Their illnesses were "all in the mind". And it is now clear, says the report, that this was not so. A small proportion of veterans presented the classic symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, but that could not account for the great majority of Gulf veterans' illnesses. Any doubt about that has since been removed by publication in the United States on 12 November 2004 of the report of the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, a prestigious body established by the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
	There was, then, something else causing these illnesses. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, considered a range of possibilities. First, a multiple immunisation programme that included anthrax and plague vaccines and tablets that contained pyridostigmine bromide to protect against nerve agents. Some veterans received as many as 14 injections in two days. This, the report says, is the most likely explanation for the illnesses of personnel who were prepared for the Gulf, but never deployed. Secondly, there is the indiscriminate spraying of tents with organophosphate pesticides—the so-called sheep-dip effect. Thirdly, exposure to nerve gas, including sarin, from the demolitions by US forces of the Iraqi chemical arms depots at Khamisiyah. And fourthly, the inhalation of depleted uranium dust.
	The most likely explanation, the report says, may be a combination of more than one cause against a background of stress, since at least some of the causes are thought to have a potentiating effect on each other. In these circumstances the inquiry found it unacceptable for the MoD to tell veterans,
	"yes, you are ill, but since we do not know which of the possible causes has caused your particular illness, we are not going to admit that it is due to your service".
	Research must go on, but that is not a reason for refusing to admit that veterans are ill because they served in the Gulf.
	The inquiry's next question was what the illnesses should be called. Veterans have always used the term Gulf War syndrome. That is the name used by the mass media. But although the name is just a label, the MoD has been unable to accept it. It might be said that the word "syndrome" is medically incorrect. But the definition used by the inquiry is:
	"A collection of symptoms and signs which tend to occur together, and form a characteristic pattern, but which may not necessarily always be due to the same pathological cause".
	Thus, even if more than one cause is operative, there is no medical reason why the symptoms should not be described as a syndrome: and even if there were it is hard to see what the MoD has to lose by accepting the term the veterans prefer. The Lloyd report says:
	"People who are ill like to have a name for their illnesses. Rather than tell a child that his father died of 'Symptoms and Signs of Ill Defined Conditions' [the label used by the MoD] it is surely better to tell him that he died of Gulf War Syndrome".
	Are veterans satisfied with the way they have been treated by the MoD? The Lloyd inquiry's answer is "No". They feel "let down and rejected" in the words of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, to the inquiry.
	Flight Lieutenant John Nichol, whose bravery under torture in Iraq was seen by television viewers across the world, told the inquiry:
	"The MoD says it has spent £8.5m on research since 1997. That's about £1.2m a year.
	Compare that with the nearly £8m a year the MoD spent on entertainment. That's £8.5m in seven years on research to save dying veterans and £8m in one year on entertainment".
	He added:
	"We weren't the enemy, but that is exactly how Gulf veterans have been made to feel by the MoD".
	It is tragic that John Nichol is made to feel so embittered. The report also quotes the House of Commons Defence Committee's comment on delays in commissioning epidemiological research that the MoD had been,
	"quick to deny but slow to investigate . . . reactive rather than proactive and characterised by scepticism, defensiveness and general torpor".
	On organophosphate pesticides the Commons' committee found:
	"a culture of resistance that pervades much of the MoD . . . a deep-seated reluctance to respond positively to external stimuli . . . and a blithe assumption that everyone else is wrong".
	The inquiry noted too the bitter complaints of many veterans about the MoD's failure to take any part in its proceedings. Paul Tyler MP told the inquiry that it was extremely important for a Minister to appear. He said:
	"The symbolism would be very powerful indeed in restoring some confidence".
	But no Minister appeared and a valuable opportunity was lost that would have cost the MoD nothing.
	The Lloyd inquiry asked the department to pay heed in particular to the view of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, that the absence of closure after so many years is now indefensible.
	The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, came last to the question of compensation. This did not figure largely in the evidence of veterans themselves. However, it did in the evidence of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, Major General Peter Craig, and Michael Mates MP, a former defence Minister, among others.
	The report's four recommendations call, first, for the MoD to acknowledge publicly that veterans with war pensions or lump-sum payments are indeed suffering injury or disease related to their service in the Gulf; secondly, to fund ex gratia payments on a pro-rata basis to all veterans who had made successful claims; thirdly, to arrange for claimants who had their claims rejected to have them reviewed; and, fourthly, for the illnesses to be called Gulf War syndrome.
	Ministerial comments on the report give the strong impression that those making them have not read even its opening paragraphs. They appear to be derived from what officials and others have told them it says. The only alternative to the assumption is that they have knowingly and wilfully misrepresented the inquiry. One reads that the Lloyd inquiry ignored much of the written evidence provided by the MoD, but in fact most of it was already well known to members of the inquiry even before being copied to them. Indeed it was all, or almost all, publicly available on the department's website.

Lord Roper: My Lords, the noble Lord is very well informed on this subject, but he is now trespassing into the time of other noble Lords who wish to speak in this debate.

Lord Morris of Manchester: My Lords, I was approached earlier by one of our colleagues, who is here now, to say that it was understood that, since I was opening the debate, there could be some flexibility. Nevertheless, I am near to concluding.

Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, my speech takes only seven or eight minutes, so perhaps noble Lords will allow the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester, the two minutes that I might have taken. I do not know whether that is possible.

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord is now drawing his speech swiftly to a close.

Lord Morris of Manchester: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Park and my noble friend Lady Andrews. Almost all of the MoD's written evidence was publicly available on the department's website, from which it was simply downloaded and dressed up as new and substantive evidence on scientific and other issues. It was, of course, already woefully outdated by extremely important and new evidence from the United States, in particular the findings on 1 June of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, on fallout from the demolitions of Iraqi chemical weapons at Khamisiyah. There followed the findings of the research advisory committee of the US Secretary of Veterans Affairs, on brain damage from using pyridostigmine bromide and organophosphates, and low-level chemical exposure.
	The MoD has yet to respond in any way either to the GAO's report or to that of the research advisory committee, notwithstanding their profound importance to thousands of British servicemen and servicewomen. Notwithstanding ministerial undertakings to inform Parliament of the outcome of Porton Down's work on the safety or otherwise of the multiple immunisation programme, and to update us by this month on the effects for British troops of the fallout from the explosions at Khamisiyah, no more has yet been said. So much for the inquiry having ignored new and substantive evidence and the MoD's claim to "political transparency".
	General Sir Peter de la Billiere, who commanded our forces in the first Gulf conflict, joined noble Lords recently in recalling that, speaking in this House after Blenheim, the Duke of Marlborough said—

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, I ask the noble Lord to draw his remarks to a close now.

Lord Morris of Manchester: My Lords, the Duke of Marlborough said that the best way to mark that great victory was to do right by the soldiers who fought so bravely with him. The Lloyd report, as has been said, is in that proud tradition, and I honour the noble and learned Lord and all who worked with him to make it happen.

Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, I have had the honour to support the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester, in the British Legion's fight for the needs of the Gulf War veterans since 1996—eight years, in which a dwindling number of men and women have grown more ill while they waited for recognition that their seriously impaired health has been due to the effects of their service in the first Gulf War, in 1991. They were then given multiple injections and vaccines, despite the fact that the Department of Health, it later proved, had warned against possible adverse reactions from such a cocktail but had been ignored.
	The then government admitted that. They also admitted, in 1997, that thanks to administrative errors in the Ministry of Defence, medical records had been lost when data were transferred from one computer to another. Of those, a number were known to be related to Gulf War veterans. When the veterans tried to gain access to those records, at least one was told, "Certain injections and medication administered during the Gulf War campaign were classified secret". So the Army medical directorate itself had to tell veterans that, in view of the classification, it had no access to those records and was not authorised to possess the information.
	The Defence Committee noted also that, despite a series of denials to the noble Countess, Lady Mar, in this House, organophosphates and pesticides had been used in the Gulf and could be a factor to be considered. A briefing note (No. 3) in June 1993 stated categorically:
	"A wide range of OP compounds had been extensively used by British personnel during Operation Granby".
	I am going over that familiar ground because this is only one—only too typical—instance of what the Defence Select Committee called "the culture of resistance" in the MoD.
	That has led the ministry, sadly, throughout the past 12 years—of course, the virtual destruction of the Defence Medical Services by the previous government did not help—to insist that no executive decision can be taken until an ever-lengthening series of research projects has been carried out. That has been demonstrated in the list of MoD-generated papers in the appendix to this admirable and extensive report. Nothing, it seems, can be done until the research has been completed. In the mean time, men sicken and die or become more ill, while, as the Defence Select Committee said, the MoD has alas been quick to deny, slow to investigate and reactive rather than proactive.
	The only thing that can break this logjam—I beg the Minister to hear this—is for Ministers to take an executive decision to act on what is known before it is too late. There have been promises—many promises. In 1997, the Prime Minister said in the run-up to the election that there would be a public inquiry. The new Minister promised action and a new beginning. What happened? There followed the creation of the Veterans Agency, subsuming the War Pensions Agency into the MoD, the creation of the Gulf Veterans Illness Unit and a newsletter.
	As is not unusual, the Government's idea of action was to create organs of government. They appear not to know how to respond, at least in this instance, in practical human terms, nor have they shown any understanding of the personal factor; that is, the need of the veterans that the justice of their case should be acknowledged. The presence of the Minister or at least a senior MoD official at the inquiry, even as an observer, would have sent a significant message. But, of course, the Government did not want to send one.
	It is amazing that the MoD still says that it does not rule out an official inquiry, but remains of the view that the only way to establish the cause of ill health in some Gulf veterans is through scientific and medical research. Annex D of the report before us lists 10 pages of the many reports and research projects undertaken from 1994 to 2004. Some are presumably still continuing. There is no doubt that Ministers take a continuing interest in this issue and have had benevolent intentions. Alas, however, there has been no will to act in the one practical way that would matter.
	However, the present admirable, independent and exhaustive report must surely be accepted and should make it unnecessary for an official inquiry that is at present contemplated only in the far distant future, if ever, to be carried out. The latest US report must equally provide a conclusive assessment of the justice and well founded nature of the Gulf veterans' claims, based on extensive research. The US, after all, funded at least one of the MoD inquiries in the UK. In the US, as here, there was initial scepticism and a view that "it was all in their minds". That attitude, it seems, has changed.
	I have taken part in no less than eight full debates on this issue, starting in 1996, and there were at least two major Defence Select Committee reports in the other place. Throughout that time, I am sad to say that the ministry has taken refuge in setting up yet more research projects while denying veterans access to their records—where they still existed—which they needed to fight their case. Perhaps I may urge the Minister to fulfil the promise of action given in 1997—a promise which I believe was given in good faith—and to take heed of the wise words of the two US Congressmen quoted in the report.
	In the US, too, there has been indifference, bureaucratic inertia and whitewash. But, as one Congressman said,
	"We understand the loss of an arm, but not the total debilitation of Gulf War illness. Because we did not understand, that does not mean we should not compensate them".
	After 14 years, it was time, he thought, to reach finality. The Americans have looked at 100,000 veterans with symptoms of Gulf War illness. They have carried out extensive research, some of it in conjunction with the UK. The MoD has always claimed to be closely associated with and informed about the US research. I hope therefore that it will now accept the US assessment and act without further delay to meet the needs of the veterans. As long ago as 1994, under the previous government, the Defence Select Committee at that time could not help contrasting the attitude of the MoD with that of the US Government.
	The services are under great pressure today with too many demands chasing too few soldiers. How the Government behave in the light of this inquiry will send a critically important signal to those now serving and to those who might think of doing so. No government can afford to be seen to be unable or unwilling to act in the face of the evidence provided both by the present inquiry and the forthcoming US report, nor can they afford to be seen to be careless of the well-being of soldiers.
	Incidentally, I should like to be assured that the change in the burden of truth criteria which was pushed through in the Armed Forces (Pensions and Compensation) Bill will not be applied retrospectively or in any way against the interests of the Gulf War veterans.

Lord Truscott: My Lords, first I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Morris of Manchester for his magnificent work on behalf of disabled people, service veterans and the Royal British Legion.
	The Government and the Ministry of Defence have never denied that a number of British veterans from the 1990–91 Gulf War have suffered from serious illnesses as a result of their service during Operation Granby. The Minister, my noble friend Lord Bach, himself said in a letter published in the summer of 2001 that the MoD had,
	"no doubt that a number of veterans are, or have been, ill as a result of service in the Gulf".
	The Minister for Veterans in another place, my honourable friend Ivor Caplin, wrote this December in the Times that:
	"This Government has always accepted that some veterans of the 1990–91 Gulf conflict have become ill and that some of this ill-health is related to their Gulf experience".
	Acknowledged health issues, recognised by the Government, include a variety of debilitating health problems, including chronic fatigue, muscle pain and wasting, asthma, arthritis, skin, memory and gastrointestinal problems. Obviously, the MoD and the Government have an obligation to provide medical and financial support to all those affected.
	I welcome the fact that Her Majesty's Government are currently spending some £8.5 million on researching the scientific background to the illnesses suffered by the Gulf War veterans. Nevertheless, I must admit to having some severe reservations about the report of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. He has, of course, had a very distinguished legal career, but I feel obliged to raise a number of issues which I regard as flaws in the report. I regret that the noble and learned Lord is not in his place today in order to respond in person.
	Despite frequent requests from Ministers, repeated in the letters set out in the appendices to the report, we are still no nearer to discovering who funded the inquiry. It is disingenuous to call upon the MoD to be more transparent when the backers of this report are unwilling to be so themselves.
	Is there foreign involvement or a possible conflict of interest? I understand that the report cost around £60,000 to produce. Your Lordships deserve to know the facts if we are to give this report due weight. I wonder whether in due course my noble friend Lord Morris of Manchester could shed light on these points. I also believe that the report plays fast and loose with some of the facts.

Lord Morris of Manchester: My Lords, I am obliged to my noble friend and I rise to respond to his question. I understand that the final cost of the Lloyd inquiry was less than £60,000 compared with the £1.68 million spent on the Hutton inquiry, and the £130 million on the Savile inquiry into the Bloody Sunday shootings. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, received no money from either side of the controversy, indeed no money from anyone for the arduous work he performed.
	I recommend that my noble friend should look urgently—before the end of the debate, if possible—at paragraph 3 of the report of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd. He will see there a very clear statement.

Lord Truscott: My Lords, I am obliged to my noble friend for that response, and of course I am not impugning in any way the integrity of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd. I simply want to say that I would be grateful if the actual funders were named. They are not named in the report, although reference is made to a charitable trust and a couple of donations.
	I return to the text of the report, which repeatedly refers to 6,000 veterans suffering from ill health due to their service in the first Gulf War. But, as the MoD makes clear, many of those thousands of claims for disablements and illnesses are unrelated to service in the Gulf War.
	The number of Gulf veterans in receipt of pensions or gratuities for unspecified, symptomatic Gulf-related illnesses is approximately 1,400, less than 3 per cent of the personnel who served in the Gulf War. Only some 100 claimants have failed to receive an award for Gulf-related illnesses, not the 272 stated in the report. Of the latter, more than half related to diagnosed disorders such as traumatic physical injuries, lower back pain or coronary disease. The Minister for Veterans has already pledged to review the rejected cases linked to Gulf illnesses.
	Of the 53,500 personnel who served in the first Gulf War, only 35 veterans, or a sample of 0.06 per cent, provided evidence to the tribunal presided over by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd. Surprisingly, the report ignores the fact that mortality from all causes among the Gulf veterans (663) is consistent with the comparable group of service personnel with the same age and gender profile who did not deploy to the Gulf (675) and is significantly lower than would be found in the UK's general population (1,032).
	The report provides no new evidence to support its claims and fails to appreciate that research and three scientific surveys, both in the UK and the US, have failed to implicate multiple vaccines, neurotoxins or depleted uranium as a cause of ill-health among Gulf veterans.
	On page 55 the report states:
	"We agree that on this question, even after fourteen years, the jury is still out".
	It recognises that some veterans are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
	The report's argument to recognise Gulf War illnesses as "Gulf War Syndrome" is, to my mind, puzzling. It quotes a definition of a "syndrome", which appears unique—a point mentioned by my noble friend Lord Morris—as,
	"A collection of symptoms and signs which tend to occur together, and form a characteristic pattern, which may not necessarily always be due to the same pathological cause".
	The Oxford Concise English Dictionary defines a "syndrome" as,
	"A group of concurrent symptoms of a disease".
	Which disease is the one that has been identified?
	The British Medical Association's Complete Family Health Encyclopaedia—which I confess to having on my bookshelf—defines a "syndrome" as,
	"A group of symptoms and/or signs that, occurring together, constitutes a particular disorder".
	The contention of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, that the MoD should simply adopt a term which the veterans prefer, even if it makes no sense and lacks any precision, seems extraordinary. The report states that,
	"People who are ill like to have a name for their illnesses"—
	but I think people prefer to have the right name and diagnosis.
	Perhaps I may quote a few medical and scientific experts. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine published its study of 40,000 former Gulf soldiers last July—a trifle more than the 35 who participated in the report before us—and concluded that the soldiers were more likely to report symptoms, but that similar symptoms were reported by both those who served in the Gulf and those who did not. The pattern of both groups was thus the same, suggesting that the former group was not exposed to a range of influences significantly different from the latter.
	As Major-General Craig wrote in the Times on 24 November, not only have many Gulf War veterans secured awards for musculoskeletal injuries sustained on duty, but a possible explanation for the growth in symptom complaints may be due to increased self-reporting. The report is therefore just plain wrong to suggest that Gulf War veterans were twice as likely to suffer from ill-health than if they had been deployed elsewhere.
	As to depleted uranium, Professor Brian Spratt, chairman of the Royal Society working group on DU munitions, said that the exposure would have been "too low" in the Gulf to cause serious health problems. And Professor Mark Peakman, from Guy's, King's and St Thomas's School of Medicine, who has carried out research on the effect of vaccines, said that he did not believe the multiple vaccines administered were to blame either. However, he has admitted that the theory that vaccines and chemicals interacted in some way "still lurks".
	A case also exists for further research into the use of organophosphorus pesticides during the Gulf conflict.
	It would not, to my mind, be fair to give ex gratia payments to all Gulf veterans while ignoring those who have served and suffered in other conflicts.
	Regrettably, I think the noble and learned Lord's report has even muddied the waters and confused vital issues. There is no simple ready answer to the illnesses and suffering of those brave men and women who served this country during the Gulf War. But I hope that the Ministry of Defence and the Government will never forget their solemn obligation to support the Gulf War veterans and their families and will continue to investigate thoroughly the causes of any illnesses resulting from their remarkable service to the people of the United Kingdom.

Lord Garden: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester, for setting in hand the inquiry which led to such a clear and effective report from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick.
	It is becoming slightly embarrassing for me to have to acknowledge that I worked in that Kremlin-like establishment, the Ministry of Defence, in the past. There is a real paradox between the ethos of the MoD and the individual armed services. In the Army, Navy and Air Force we are trained to look after our people in both peace and war. The duty of care extends from the top to the bottom. The fierceness of the recent debates about regiments reflects the centuries of loyalty, both of the soldiers to the regiment and the regiment to the soldiers. We have such good Armed Forces because they know that they can rely on their comrades and their leadership.
	Yet what have we seen from the Ministry of Defence in recent times? Whether justly or not, its reputation is one of cover-up, lack of transparency and unwillingness to support the troops when they are in distress. In my short time in your Lordships' House, I have heard the Government Front Bench stonewall over the need for a public inquiry into the allegations of abuse at Deepcut and I have been involved while the Government legislated to change the balance of evidence needed to prove service disability. The Government have been introducing redundancy and cutbacks just as our Armed Forces are involved in global operations.
	We all know that grieving families report time and time again the difficulties of getting information out of the Ministry of Defence. The Ministry of Defence still ignores the recommendations of your Lordships' Select Committee over the tragic accident to the Chinook that crashed into the Mull of Kintyre. As the noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, said, this is not good for recruiting, retention or the morale of our Armed Forces. They need to know that when we send them off to dangerous, but vital, tasks, we will give them every help before, during and after each operation. This includes a duty of care in terms of protection, be it body armour or, as we are talking about in today's debate, vaccination and protection from harmful chemical or biological agents.
	Those of us who have been subjected to military inoculations understand that mistakes might very well occur in the desire to protect against every possibility, particularly when things are done at short notice. During operations, the implications of exposure to other agents, be they pesticides, atmospheric pollutants or hostile warfare substances, may not be fully appreciated at the time. All this is completely understandable. What is not understandable is the unwillingness of the Ministry of Defence subsequently to be as helpful as possible, to use every means to find causes and to reassure its people in the services and their families.
	In looking at illness caused by service in the first Gulf War, the Defence Select Committee, which has already been alluded to by a number of noble Lords, reported in 1995 that:
	"In responding to allegations of a Gulf War Syndrome MoD has been quick to deny but slow to investigate".
	It went on to say that:
	"MoD's response has been reactive rather than proactive and characterised throughout by scepticism, defensiveness and general torpor".
	Nine years after that report, and 14 years after the event, the MoD refused to take part in the independent public inquiry under the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. I shall not spend much time on the reading of the MoD's briefing by the noble Lord, Lord Truscott. I totally reject what he said. It was a very good report.
	In that report, if one looks at the medical annexes, there is a catalogue of the continuing feelings of resentment of the people involved towards the MoD for its mishandling of this sensitive issue. The inquiry gives simple answers to the questions that have caused so much distress to so many veterans and their families. It confirms that those who are receiving war pensions and gratuities are ill and that their illness was caused by service in the Gulf. It identifies the likely causes and confirms that the illness is rightly described as a syndrome—Gulf War syndrome, in fact. Other countries have had similar problems. Most importantly, the report states that our sick veterans remain unsatisfied with their treatment.
	Paragraph 283 of the Lloyd report gives four simple recommendations that the authors believe could go far to restore trust and confidence. These are that the MoD should acknowledge that it was service in the Gulf that caused the illness; that Gulf War syndrome is an appropriate description; that a fund for ex gratia payments should be set up; and, finally, that the 272 rejected claims should be reviewed. There are just four recommendations.
	I do not doubt that today the Minister will again give us an unhelpful reply. Those who believe they are suffering from Gulf War syndrome will continue to feel aggrieved. The reputation of the MoD as a good employer will continue to go downhill. Perhaps, more importantly, we will remain further away from an objective truth about the undoubted illnesses that many of our veterans suffer.
	Will the Minister explain what cause is served by this intransigence? If we have damaged our servicemen, even while trying to protect them, we must ensure that we recognise that and, if necessary, compensate them. I hope that it is not about financial compensation. The report evaluates that and shows that the amounts we are talking about are trivial in terms of the defence budget.
	Finally, given the ever-worsening image of the Ministry of Defence, will the Minister undertake to consult his colleagues more widely about promoting a new culture of openness and public awareness in the department? Perhaps the culture of secrecy, which is understandable on operational security matters, has become too extended into personnel issues. The MoD needs to take a more enlightened view of its responsibilities for its people.

Lord Turnberg: My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Morris of Manchester on securing this debate, on all the hard work he has done over the years for Gulf War syndrome sufferers, and on ensuring that this report was produced. I also commend the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, and his colleagues, Dr Norman Jones and Sir Michael Davies for producing the report. I believe that it is a very good summary of what is, to many, a very confusing picture. It has made a very good contribution to delineating what is fact and what is opinion. Teasing through this thicket of fact and fiction has been no easy task.
	It is hard not to be moved by the suffering described by the many Gulf War veterans who gave evidence to the inquiry. There is no doubt that they have been, and are, ill, and some are very ill indeed. The question which had to be answered was whether this undoubted illness was due to their having been in the Gulf in 1991. The answer to that specific question is yes, at least for many.
	The evidence for that is now pretty clear and has emerged from a number of studies. Perhaps the most convincing of those, at least to me, is that of Professor Simon Wessely at King's College, who published his work in the British Medical Journal in December 2003. He studied a very large group of several thousand Gulf War veterans and compared them with a very strictly controlled group of war veterans who had been in Bosnia. They were well matched in every way, and he showed quite clearly that ill health of one sort of another, whatever that was, occurred twice as commonly in the Gulf veterans than in the Bosnian veterans. That figure of twice the number of subjects with symptoms was confirmed by Professor Nicola Cherry in another well controlled study.
	It is also of some interest, and perhaps part of the problem, that the types of symptoms and illnesses suffered were very similar in the two groups. Veterans got them twice as often if they had been in the Gulf than if they had been in Bosnia.
	That similarity of symptoms makes it very difficult to ascribe any single individual's particular case to the Gulf, since the same symptoms may occur in any veteran and, indeed, in the general public. That is why it has been so important to carry out these types of carefully controlled epidemiological studies—to nail down the fact that there was indeed something more going on in the Gulf. In the absence of any more specific symptoms or tests, we do not have much else to go on.
	There is one set of statistics to which the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, referred, which is reassuring, at least so far. There do not seem to have been any more veterans dying in the 13 years since the Gulf War than veterans of other wars, and considerably fewer than in an age and sex-matched control group from the general population. If it is any compensation—although possibly not much—it seems that veterans of any conflict can look forward to living longer than the rest of us.
	Once we get beyond the fact that something different was indeed going on in the Gulf which contributed to subsequent ill health, we are in the realms of increasing uncertainty. For example, although a number of researchers have made valiant efforts to demonstrate specific defects in the brain, the nerves or the blood, these can be regarded only as interesting but unproven. More research is needed to see whether they are real. This area of research is bedevilled by methodological problems and it is easy to get misled by enthusiasm.
	Furthermore, there is a long list of potential culprits which might have caused the illnesses. My current favourite is the multiple vaccines they were given, perhaps with the pyridostigmine in the NAPS they took. Others no doubt will have their own favourite culprit. However, the point is that in the absence of stronger evidence than we have at present, we may argue until the cows come home about what might have caused it. Yet, meanwhile, we must face the fact that whatever the cause or causes, the set of symptoms which make up the Gulf War syndrome exist and patients suffer.
	Of course more research is necessary if we are to avoid the same mistakes in the future, but meanwhile, and despite the difficulties in making a clear-cut definitive diagnosis, these veterans who are suffering should receive some compensation. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will recognise that not to do so now will increasingly be seen as not only unwarranted but uncaring, especially at a time when we have cause to be particularly grateful to our troops in the field.

Lord Clement-Jones: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester, on initiating the debate. It is probably the sixth such debate in which I have taken part since being in this House. I also congratulate him on being the only begetter of the Lloyd inquiry. As a result of that inquiry, the issues are now much clearer and they provide a better basis for debate.
	On previous occasions, I have described the MoD's responses as bizarre. As is clear from the responses that have been given during the past few weeks, they need to be described as bloody-minded. The response of the Ministry of Defence and the Minister for Veterans, Ivor Caplin, to the Lloyd report was in three parts. First, they attacked the funding of the report. Secondly, they stated that it revealed no new,
	"substantive scientific evidence to support its conclusions and recommendations".
	Thirdly, they said that it failed to take into account the substantive or scientific written material provided by the MoD.
	The response on funding has all the hallmarks of the tactics employed by the Alastair Campbell school of political warfare—when in the wrong, create a diversion. Throughout the inquiry as it is, the Minister for Veterans and the MoD adopted a grudging tone of voice. Look at the letters at the back of the inquiry report, particularly those on funding.
	This casting doubt on the funding was pretty rich coming from a Minister who had failed to fund or indeed to set up an inquiry himself. What hidden conflict of interest might there be—and I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, adopted virtually identical language to that adopted by the Minister for Veterans—which would invalidate the conclusions of the report? In what circumstances would the source of funding—

Lord Truscott: My Lords, I want to make the point clear because there are inferences that my briefing comes from the MoD. My briefing paper was produced by the House of Lords Library, so I can assure your Lordships that it was impartial.

Lord Clement-Jones: My Lords, I said that the noble Lord adopted virtually identical language. I am sure that it could well have been taken from the parliamentary reports of what the Minister for Veterans had to say. I give the noble Lord the full benefit of the doubt in the circumstances, depressing though it may be.
	In what circumstances would the source of funding make a difference to the report's conclusions? I leave it to the Minister to reply. One can conclude only that it was a tactic designed to hide ministerial embarrassment over the quality of the report.
	The Government's response that the inquiry produced no new evidence is also spurious. The fact is that the role of inquiries such as this is often to put together existing evidence, assess it and reach conclusions—a task which the inquiry has done well.
	The Minister and the MoD throughout refused to take part in the inquiry on the grounds that they did not accept that it was necessary to restore confidence among servicemen and women in the MoD. It is clear the Royal British Legion and many MPs will and have testified to the contrary, as my noble friend Lord Garden has made clear as an ex-serviceman. Many would go further and say that the MoD's refusal to settle the issue satisfactorily has had and will continue to have an adverse effect on service recruitment and retention—a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Park.
	The key question that the inquiry had before it—an inquiry that had an extremely distinguished panel—is whether the ill health and mortality of Gulf veterans is unusual and is related to service in the Gulf. The evidence of Professor Simon Wessely and Professor Nicola Cherry, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, who, after all, should know his onions in the medical field, was absolutely crucial. Both believe that the interaction of vaccines was the key issue. Professor Wessely was quoted as saying:
	"There is a big Gulf War health effect".
	Professor Cherry is quoted as saying:
	"I will go to my deathbed swearing that there is a problem amongst this group of people".
	There are four or five strong possible causes, to which the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, referred, either in combination or singly, for the illness of Gulf veterans: multiple vaccines, organophosphates, exposure to nerve gas and depleted uranium dust. Professor Malcolm Hooper as a result asked why we insisted on a single cause when multiple factors are at work. Indeed, the conclusions of the congressional research advisory committee were very similar. It said that a substantial proportion of Gulf War veterans are ill with multi-symptom conditions not explained by wartime stress or psychiatric illness. In parenthesis, I should say that in general the United States authorities are demonstrating themselves to be considerably more sympathetic than the Ministry of Defence here.
	As the precise cause has not yet been identified, the Ministry of Defence has not been prepared to admit any responsibility. Nor is it prepared to admit, even after 14 years, the use of the term "Gulf War syndrome". The time is never right for a public inquiry; instead, we are offered endless research—to what purpose becomes less and less clear over time. However, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, points out, if the MoD is prepared to use the label SSIDC, which stands for symptoms and signs of ill-defined conditions, why on earth is it not prepared to use the term "Gulf War syndrome"? They are both umbrella terms to cover multiple causes. It is typical of the illogical approach adopted by the MoD.
	Then there is the key recommendation of the inquiry. There are now a finite number of veterans in receipt of war pensions, whose illnesses are the result of one or more causes resulting from the first Gulf War. The report recommends that the MoD should accept, effectively, that that is Gulf War syndrome, settle with the claimants and make appropriate ex gratia payments. At present, the MoD is demonstrating nil magnanimity and nil imagination. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, said to the inquiry in evidence, absence of closure is indefensible. Never did an ex-serviceman speak a truer word.

Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I start by declaring an interest as honorary president of the Earl Haig branch and the Kent County branch of the Royal British Legion. I am also a trustee of the Astor of Hever Trust, which has given charitable donations to the Royal British Legion over many years. I make no apology in paying tribute to the Royal British Legion for its hard work on this issue over many years.
	We are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester, for the opportunity to debate this report. He has indefatigably championed the cause of ex-service people, as the parliamentary adviser to the Royal British Legion over many years. It was the noble Lord who succeeded in obtaining the services of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, and his colleagues to hold this inquiry. It would be difficult to have found a more competent and reliable panel to conduct the inquiry. I would also like to add my thanks to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, and his inquiry panel for producing such a balanced and coherent report and recommendations.
	We on these Benches recognise that this issue has been difficult for the MoD to cope with given that there has been no definite medical evidence upon which to establish a pattern of illness arising from the Gulf War. The report's recommendations now provide the Government with a unique opportunity to close this long-running chapter in the lives of many who have suffered after serving in the Gulf during the period 1990–91. There has been cross-party support for the report.
	It is critical to relieve the burden of veterans and their families. This group of people have been ignored by the MoD and this report is a considered and convincing case for recognition.
	The report proposes the setting up of a fund to compensate, by way of proportionate ex gratia payment, those who still suffer. This would show that the Government recognise the personal cost that these individuals and their families have paid in serving the Crown. This is surely not too much to ask of the Minister for Veterans whose duty is to support veterans in need. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, says in his recommendations:
	"It seems to us that with the termination of any legal proceedings against the MoD, and with the results of the three epidemiological surveys to hand, now is the time to reach agreement with the veterans".
	We welcome the Minister's agreement to review the cases of 114 applicants whose claims for war pensions have been rejected. But the acceptance of the label of Gulf War syndrome is critical to move this impasse forward. Gulf War syndrome, already recognised—as the noble Lord, Lord Morris, noted—by the war pensions tribunals, will not only allow financial recompense to be paid but, equally important, will allow general practitioners and others to recognise and treat the symptoms individual sufferers are displaying without further delay.
	I look forward to the Minister's response and hearing whether the Government will implement the four recommendations that the noble Lord, Lord Garden, mentioned. That would not only meet the immediate needs of the veterans themselves and their dependants but also restore trust. I need not remind noble Lords that members of the Armed Forces enter into an unconditional contract on joining which can entail them losing their lives in the service of this country. The Lloyd report has attracted support from the media and at all levels of society. It is vital that those who are already familiar with its contents encourage others to read it so that they better understand the arguments.
	Since its publication there have been a number of letters published in national newspapers calling for the implementation of the report's recommendations, not least one signed by the noble Lord, Lord Morris, and the noble and gallant Lords, Lord Bramall and Lord Craig, both former Chiefs of the Defence Staff, and General Sir Peter de la Billière. In another place, Early Day Motion 81 has already attracted 93 signatures.
	The recommendations of the inquiry offer the chance to break the longstanding deadlock over Gulf War illnesses.

Lord Bach: My Lords, first I commend my noble friend Lord Morris of Manchester on securing this debate—I am not sure that I commend him on securing it on this particular day so close to Christmas—and, much more importantly, on his huge commitment to the issue which we are discussing today but, more widely than that, on his commitment to the whole issue of disability both in the Armed Forces and outside. The whole House admires him for what he has done. That is not to say that he and I do not fall out from time to time, but that is certainly done on my side with enormous respect.
	The Government have always given the concerns of 1990–91 Gulf veterans the highest priority. This important and highly complex issue will continue to receive the close attention that it deserves. We are well aware of the interest shown by veterans and parliamentarians in the independent investigation by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, but before I respond on the points raised about the conclusions and recommendations of the investigation, I will briefly remind the House of the Government's approach to Gulf veterans' illnesses issues.
	Over 53,000 UK Armed Forces personnel deployed to the Gulf in 1990–91; and a minority are ill. We all want to know why that is. The fact is, however, that there is no medical or scientific consensus on the cause or causes of ill health among some Gulf veterans. I remind the House of the key facts relating to Gulf veterans' mortality. The latest statistics show that overall there have been 663 deaths compared to 675 in a comparison group who did not deploy to the Gulf. That is also significantly lower than would be expected for the UK general population as a whole; namely, 1,032.
	In July 1997, within four months of coming to power, we published a policy statement, Gulf Veterans' Illnesses: A New Beginning, which set out how we proposed to address veterans' health concerns. Many of the commitments that we made in that document have been fulfilled, although you would not believe it listening to some of the extravagant speeches made in this House this afternoon. That policy statement continues to underpin our activities. It makes clear that first, all Gulf veterans will have prompt access to medical advice from the Gulf Veterans' Medical Assessment Programme; secondly, that there will be appropriate research into veterans' illnesses and factors that might have a bearing on these; and thirdly, that the Ministry of Defence will make available to the public information that it possesses which is of potential relevance. I will say something about each of these three areas.
	The Gulf Veterans' Medical Assessment Programme has been running since 1993, under the previous government and this Government. I pay tribute to the measured way in which the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, spoke in this debate, as is usually the case. It contrasted with the tone taken by some other noble Lords. The programme has seen over 3,400 patients since 1993, some more than once. We remain committed to the long-standing arrangement that war pensioners should be given priority in NHS hospitals for examination or treatment relating to their pensioned disablement, subject always to the needs of overall medical priorities.
	Secondly, there is scientific evidence that 1990–91 Gulf veterans report more ill health than other comparable groups, but that the pattern of this ill health is not unique to Gulf veterans. They report the same symptoms and conditions as do UK Bosnia veterans and UK military personnel who did not deploy to the Gulf. The only difference is the increased frequency with which Gulf veterans report such symptoms. It is worth reminding the House that specific diseases, disorders, or medical conditions and medical syndromes each have common features such as a set of physical signs and/or symptoms that distinguish them from other medical conditions. Gulf veterans do not present with an identifiable or distinct pattern of symptoms or signs.
	The consensus of the international scientific and medical community, which seems to be dismissed airily by some speakers, following extensive research on the matter, is that there is insufficient evidence to enable this ill health to be characterised as a unique Gulf-related illness or syndrome. Our approach must be guided by the scientific and medical evidence, which is of importance here, rather than being something that can just be dismissed. That is why we do not recognise Gulf War syndrome as a medical condition. The term "Gulf War syndrome" is not found in the international standard used around the world by physicians and scientists for distinguishing diagnosable disease categories, the tenth edition of the World Health Organisation's International Classification of Diseases. The Government cannot therefore accept the Lloyd recommendation that we should use the term as a matter of convenience.
	Of course, that does not stop Gulf veterans who are ill receiving a war pension and attributable benefits under the Armed Forces occupational pension schemes. Such pensions are not awarded for a list of disorders, but for any disablement which can be accepted as caused or made worse by service. I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Park, that the new scheme will not affect the right of veterans of the first Gulf War.
	At the end of September 2004, about 2,800 Gulf veterans were in receipt of a war disablement pension. At that date, 2,290 veterans had received a gratuity for disablement assessed at under 20 per cent. There will be some overlap between those figures, as some individuals will have received first a gratuity and then a pension. The figures include awards for both Gulf-related and non-Gulf-related injuries or illnesses, as our statistics do not enable us to distinguish the origin of the disablement.
	Veterans of the Gulf conflict can and do receive compensation in the form of war pensions and Armed Forces pensions on the same basis as all other veterans. We see no case for the recommendation of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, to single out one group of veterans for preferential treatment by way of an ex gratia payment on top of the pensions that they already get.
	Of course we want to find out why some veterans from the Gulf conflict are ill; our current research programme will cost at least £8.5 million to complete. The Medical Research Council provides independent scientific advice on the research programme. It has undertaken an independent scientific review of all the UK research work that has been carried out into Gulf veterans' illnesses in an international context. The results of the review, including recommendations for future research, were published last year. The third strand of our approach is openness. We have made an enormous amount of information public in response to inquiries from veterans, and continue to do so.
	I want to stress that the well-being of personnel whom we deploy is of the greatest importance to us, and we have made some important improvements since that conflict. We have introduced a new operational medical record form which is now in use; published a paper on 4 November this year, The 1990/1991 Gulf Conflict: Health and Personnel Related Lessons Identified; ensured that troops are immunised routinely, so that personnel do not receive a combination of vaccines on deployment; and developed arrangements to limit the effects of post-traumatic illness within the Armed Forces over a number of years. Many of the new measures have, of course, been applied to Operation TELIC. We announced on 8 May 2003 that we were to look closely at the health of personnel deployed during Operation TELIC, and have engaged independent researchers to carry out the necessary work.
	The Ministry of Defence is aware of the report of the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses in the United States and has noted it with interest. Its report is a review of some existing research with which we were already familiar. There are areas in the report which are not supported by the balance of scientific evidence. For example, the report does not take into account a recent important paper by the US Institute of Medicine, which states that there is insufficient and inadequate evidence to determine whether an association exists between low-level exposure to sarin and long-term adverse health effects. We also note that much of the research drawn on to formulate the recommendations was carried out by members of the committee, which raises some concerns about objectivity.
	I turn to the investigation of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd. We have studied the report carefully, as we would any other material of potential relevance to the issue. We believe that it contains no new substantive or scientific evidence to support its conclusions and recommendations and, frankly, it also fails to take into full account the large amount of written material provided by the MoD.
	This report supports our view that an inquiry, whether official or unofficial, would not answer the basic question of why some Gulf veterans are ill. The possibility remains that we may look again at this matter, but we maintain that it is only through scientific and medical research that we will ever be likely to be able to establish the causes of Gulf veterans' illnesses. That is the reason Ministers and officials did not attend the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyds's, investigation. The report does nothing to change the Government's view of whether an inquiry will answer the basic question about why some veterans are ill.
	The report gives the impression that 6,000 veterans are suffering from ill-health due to their service in the Gulf conflict. I must point out that only a minority are receiving a war pension for Gulf-related illnesses. Although all 6,000 served in the Gulf, many of the claims relate to physical injuries suffered in the Gulf or for disablements and illnesses unrelated to their Gulf service. The number of veterans in receipt of pensions or gratuities for unspecified, symptomatic Gulf War-related illnesses is approximately 1,400, less than 3 per cent of the personnel who served in the Gulf conflict. Additionally, only some 100 claimants have failed to receive an award for Gulf-related illnesses, not the 272 recommended for review by the Lloyd report. The others relate to physical injuries suffered in the Gulf or for disablements and illnesses unrelated to their Gulf service. Of course, my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence and Minister for Veterans announced that the MoD will re-examine the roughly 100 cases that do relate to Gulf-related illness where these can be identified.
	I have to say that we are surprised by the reluctance of the noble and learned Lord to disclose who sponsored and funded his investigation. It is a valid question. We know from paragraph 3 of the foreword to the report that a private trust funded the inquiry. We know from that paragraph that two other substantial donations helped to fund the inquiry. Why can we not know who funded the inquiry? Why is there a secret about it? I have to say that this contrasts with the Government's policy of openness and honesty set out in our policy document Gulf Veterans' Illnesses: A New Beginning. I very much hope that my noble friend Lord Morris will be able to tell us, when he winds up the debate—

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, no, he does not wind up the debate.

Lord Bach: My Lords, I am sorry; when he closes the debate—

Lord Grocott: My Lords, no, he does not do that. You are the last to speak.

Lord Bach: My Lords, but he has to reply.

Lord Grocott: My Lords, no he does not, it is an Unstarred Question.

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, you can only give way to him.

Lord Bach: My Lords, in which case, I apologise.

Lord Morris of Manchester: My Lords, my noble friend referred more than once in his speech to the figure of £8.5 million being spent on research. Is he aware that the United States Government have already spent some 250 million dollars? That comparison concerns many Gulf War veterans and bereaved families. They want to know why we cannot take more into account the research findings across the Atlantic that have, frankly, been much better financed than ours.

Lord Bach: My Lords, I mentioned the £8.5 million once in my speech. I should say that that is the least we will be spending on research. I should imagine that we will probably spend more. Of course, I am afraid that in this field we do not compete with the Americans—as in so many other fields to do with the Armed Forces. But I think that the scientific research that we are considering and have ordered has been of the highest quality. I am a little surprised by the noble Lord's question, because it seems that the tenor of some of the speakers in this debate suggests that all of that research is quite unnecessary. They seem to be asking, "Why are we bothered with it at all? Why do we not just take account of whichever witnesses happen to want to give evidence to the inquiry?".
	I repeat my question and shall certainly give way to any noble Lord who wants to answer it. Who funded this inquiry? I look forward to the reply.

Lord Clement-Jones: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord can say what the problem is. I do not think that any of us understand why the noble Lord and his colleague in the Commons are so exercised by this issue. What is the potential conflict of interest? What is the malign interest that could possibly affect the outcome of the inquiry?

Lord Bach: My Lords, the noble Lord belongs to a political party that always says, at least, that it believes in openness in matters of this kind. I think that that is right. Why, on this occasion, is he so quick to rush to the defence when no information is given about funding?

Lord Clement-Jones: My Lords—

Lord Bach: My Lords, I shall not give way again. I have made my point and I have not had an answer to the question that I legitimately raised.

Lord Morris of Manchester: My Lords, my noble friend asked me a question and I shall be very brief in answering it because of the time. In paragraph 3 of his report and on other occasions, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, made it very clear why he has not felt able to dishonour a pledge of privacy to people who wanted confidentiality. I understand that certainly none of them had any axe to grind. He has not varied his position at all. This is an independent inquiry, properly so called.

Lord Bach: My Lords, he certainly says that about the private trust. Later in paragraph 3, he also mentions that there are two other substantial donations,
	"for which we are very grateful".
	He does not say that the makers of those donations do not want to be named.
	In short, the Government do not agree with the conclusions and recommendations of the very distinguished noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd. However, I reassure the House that the Government are committed to addressing the complex and difficult issue of Gulf veterans' illnesses, to understanding why some veterans of the first Gulf conflict are now ill, and to providing them with appropriate support.
	We have also made every effort to learn from the lessons of that conflict. Of course, we cannot guarantee that deployed forces will not suffer injury or ill health, but we are doing everything that we can to minimise the risk.

Adjournment

Lord Grocott: My Lords, in moving the adjournment of the House, which I now do, I shall take the opportunity, which has become customary, of offering thanks to numerous people who deserve them for serving us so well during the year 2004. In doing so, I shall be very respectful of the injunctions that I frequently give the House—that is, to be brief. I am acutely mindful that the greatest service we can give to all servants of the House is to do what they all want to do—that is, to go home as quickly as possible when this debate concludes.
	In a way, my job has been made easier this year because, as the House will know, there has been an investigation and report into Members' attitudes towards the services provided by the House. Rarely can a report have given such a glowing vote of thanks to those who serve us so well. So it is not only the instinct of the three Chief Whips and the Convenor that we shall be hearing about this evening; it is the scientific assessment of the views of the House, which has been presented for us all to see. It is a glowing report of all the departments.
	It would be silly of me to try to go through them all but all the departments are mentioned at various stages in the report: the Hansard writers—enough said; we all know how good a job they do in improving our speeches; the research department of the Library; and the ones that work behind the scenes—the Computer Office, the Accountant's Office and all other departments. If I miss one out, that does not mean that I ignore it. As is always the case on occasions such as this, one is forced to be invidious and to make one or two specific references. I do so randomly, which perhaps I am allowed to do in the hope that other speakers will refer to one or two that I have not mentioned.
	I pay tribute today to one group of workers who, because of the nature of their job, are less frequently seen by noble Lords. They deserve a certain accolade. They look after the fabric of this building and keep it clean; they are here before most of us arrive in the morning. In my judgment, we are privileged to work in such a beautiful building and the people who keep the fabric secure and undertake all the attendant duties need to be congratulated and thanked.
	I need to thank another, more obvious group. They were kind enough to invite me to their annual dinner last Thursday, so I thank them for that. They are the Doorkeepers of the House whose skills are legendary. A condition of my accepting the invitation to their dinner was that I referred to them today and I do so gladly. Among their many skills is what I can describe only as their phenomenal capacity for communication of which I can give the simplest illustration. I only have to whisper within earshot of any member of their fraternity the group of amendments on which we are likely to complete the day's play for that message to be transmitted right round the building at a speed which makes the speed of light seem lethargic. People in all parts of the building appear to know the information and act upon it in their various ways. On behalf of the House I give genuine thanks to the Doorkeepers.
	I also want to mention the Refreshment Department. It has had a difficult year for all kinds of reasons. Many noble Lords know Rupert Ellwood, who is moving on. We thank him and all who work there.
	On a significantly more serious matter, I refer to those responsible for the security of our House. I want to mention two names in that regard. One is Chief Superintendent Gregory Roylance, who is retiring this year as head of security after eight years' service to the House and after 30 years' experience with the police, which is a fine record of service. Our thanks certainly go to him and we send him our very best wishes for his retirement.
	On a far more sombre and serious note, as many Members of the House will know, a popular and well liked security officer, Mark Peters, was tragically killed in a road accident earlier this month. Although many Members of the House individually will have signified their thoughts and sent their condolences, this is an opportunity for me, on behalf of absolutely everyone, to pass on our most sincere condolences to the wife of Mark Peters, Bernadette, and to the rest of his family.
	The House as a whole has been awarded the Investors in People accolade, which brings a modest smile to those at the Clerks' Table. According to the accolade, it means that this is a good place to work and one where people are looked after and given opportunities to develop. So that has to be a good thing. That applies to everyone who works here. With becoming modesty on my part, a separate award was given to the Government Whips' Office, which also received an Investors in People award. That shows that the Whips' Office has a caring and compassionate side to its nature as well as the better known characteristics of Whips' activities. That shows that this is a popular and likeable place to work and we are enormously grateful to people in all departments who work for us.
	Although regrettably only one noble Lord is here to listen to this, in the light of the job that I have to do day in and day out, it would be remiss of me not to give a particular thanks to the 29 per cent of the Members of this House who find it in their hearts day in and day out to vote for the Government. It defies all known laws of mathematics that the Government get their legislative programme through, but I am deeply grateful to those who help me to do that because it keeps me in employment—at least for another hazardous year. I give my gratitude and thanks to them.
	Finally, I simply wish all staff, who I am sure are even keener than I am to get home at the end of this untimed contribution from me, the very best for this holiday period. And I wish all Members of this House a very happy new year, and one where the hallmark of all contributions will be brevity and succinctness.

Lord Cope of Berkeley: My Lords, I am delighted to associate myself with the sentiments of the noble Lord the Captain of the Gentlemen-at-Arms, both on a personal basis and on behalf of the members of my party. As he said, we are exceptionally well served by all the staff in your Lordships' House and we thank them all. The staff are one of the special aspects of this place.
	During this year we have had a large influx of new Peers. It is noticeable that so many maiden speakers remark on the helpfulness and courtesy of the staff. It is one of the things that strikes all newcomers when they come here, and, for that matter, visitors too. I just hope that we Peers are as courteous and thoughtful to the staff as they are to us. I include all the staff in that.
	Special mention has already been made of Chief Superintendent Roylance who is retiring after so many years. We certainly thank him. The changes and increased difficulties that he and his staff of police, security officers and civilian staff have had to deal with in the past few months and years needs no emphasis from me. Their job gets more and more difficult. We continue to rely on their vigilance day after day and night after night. Sometimes they are not the easiest jobs and we are not the easiest people to handle in this respect. So we thank them.
	I certainly join in expressing sympathy to the young family of security officer Mark Peters who, as the Chief Whip said, was a popular member of the force. Christmas will be a most difficult time for them.
	The Principal Doorkeeper, the Second Principal Doorkeeper and all the Doorkeepers are an important part of the security of this House and are our face to the visitors who come to the galleries and so on and to meet us. We appreciate them. Had the Chief Whip not mentioned it, I was going to emphasise the contribution of the cleaners and the maintenance men. However, he has done so, and we do appreciate them.
	The Clerks and their staff keep us organised with the aid of ever more sophisticated management methods, which we do our best to keep up with, as these new documents succeed one another. I congratulate everybody concerned in the Investors in People award, which has been achieved very deservedly as far as I can tell. But they also of course keep us on the straight and narrow procedurally, which has not always been easy these past few weeks. We need that too.
	The Library and the information staff keep us informed and, indeed, keep the world informed to a considerable degree of our proceedings through the information section. Of course they also keep us very efficiently in computers and other electronic devices which are improving all the time.
	The Refreshment Department had a particularly difficult time with the alterations and so on going on, but you would never have known it as its first-class services continued throughout.
	I should also like to thank all the members of my party who have supported us during the year, particularly those Peers who serve the House in various ways—those who sit on the Woolsack, those who chair committees and those who do all the other jobs which the Chief Whips probably know more about than do most of the members—to keep the place running smoothly. So I thank all of them and wish all Members of all parties and all the staff a very happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.

Lord Roper: My Lords, it is certainly one of the most pleasant tasks as a Chief Whip to support the Captain of the Gentlemen-at-Arms and the noble Lord, Lord Cope, this afternoon on behalf of those on these Benches in thanking those who make it such a pleasant thing to work in this building. I thank them and also the two Convenors whom we have had this year, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, and now the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, who together have ensured that, on the whole, the usual channels have got things done. If your Lordships have not noticed them going wrong, it suggests that we have not done too bad a job of it on this occasion.
	We are able to do that because of the hard work not only of the Government Whips' Office but the offices of each of the parties and of the Convenor, who help to support us. The Government Chief Whips' Office is certainly essential for our smooth and efficient running and Andrew Makower has certainly maintained the high standard expected of the private secretary of the Government Chief Whip. He has been well supported this year by his two principal personal assistants, first, Chloë Mawson, who was his principal deputy until Easter, and now Rebecca Neal, who herself will be leaving before too long. We are fortunate that they have been able to make those contributions. I was therefore very pleased to see that not only the parliamentary offices but the Government Chief Whips' Office received the Investors in People award.
	As my colleagues have said, it is impossible tonight to refer to each department in any detail, so I shall concentrate on just two or three, although, as has been said, I am very much aware of all those who, collectively, make our life here so effective and agreeable. It is the parts of the Refreshment Department that we do not see that have to carry the brunt of the work: those who work down below in the kitchens, who have been going through such a major overhaul—and not only during the past 12 months; we are in the middle year of three years. They have had to put in a considerable extra effort and I am sure that they are looking forward to the completion of that work in 2005.
	The other group to whom reference has already been made is those who have had additional tasks in recent years because of our security in our changed and more difficult situation. Led by Black Rod and his staff, the Doorkeepers and Attendants, the Metropolitan Police and its security officers, they have had no easy task and have done extremely well. Reference has already been made to the tragic death in a road accident two weeks ago of Mark Peters, who had served for six years, primarily in Black Rod's Garden, monitoring vehicles coming in and out. As others have said, our thoughts certainly go out to his young wife and his two boys, aged six and three, who will be having a rather different Christmas from the one they would have expected.
	Reference was also made to the fact that the Palace of Westminster as a whole has just lost the services of Chief Superintendent Gregory Roylance. I saw a certain amount of his work serving for the past four years on the Security Committee and it is certainly true that his quiet efficiency in systematically improving security will be remembered. I am sure that he will take the good wishes of Parliament as a whole with him for a long and happy retirement.
	I also pay tribute to my colleagues, who have as usual been active on these Benches during the past year, not always pleasing those on other Benches but none the less contributing usefully, I hope, to the work of the House.
	This House can work only because of the many contributions of so many people who support us in so many ways. They are all part of the larger family of this House and I certainly join my colleagues in wishing them, as well as Peers, a very happy Christmas and a very successful 2005.

Lord Williamson of Horton: My Lords, in the six years that I have been in this House, there have been many changes, but one thing that has not changed is the universal appreciation of the efficiency, courtesy and good humour of all those staff who keep this Parliament on track. That is why I consider it a privilege for the first time as Convenor of the Cross-Bench Peers to join those colleagues who have already spoken in thanking the staff of the House for their work on our behalf.
	As a new Convenor, I try to keep my ear to the ground; I haunt the corridors, learning what is afoot, and I try to have close contacts with the Cross Benchers, whether they are age 90 or over or the newest Members of the House. They all appreciate greatly the service that they receive from the staff here: in Black Rod's Department, the Office of the Clerk of the Parliaments, the Library, Hansard, the Refreshment Department and so on.
	If I refer briefly to some groups of staff, it is only because the Cross Benchers and I have more contact with them. Of course, first, there are the Doorkeepers and attendants. We see them every day and they usually cheer us up. Secondly, there are those who have been affected by the huge volume of work, which has increased, and particularly those who have been affected by the changes that we have made in procedures. The number of amendments to Bills has risen every time that I look at the figures. For those who deal with Questions, I recall that we first increased the number, then decreased them, then changed the number of topical Questions and so on. The work of the Committee Office has also increased. I know that because I caused some of it myself.
	Some members of staff have had to deal with the consequences of the new building in the Palace, the works that we have had, and security. As other noble Lords have said, the Refreshment Department took rather the brunt of that, but the quality of the food and drinks service is as good as ever. I always remember which is the "Content" Lobby because it is nearest to the bars and refreshment services. That is the easiest way to remember it; it is a very justified association.
	Black Rod's Department has brought on-stream Abingdon House—it is not a new building but it has a new name—which the Cross Benchers grade "triple A", so it is much appreciated. As for the security service, I join those who thank Gregory Roylance for the work that he has done here over many years. Like other noble Lords, I pass on my sympathy to the family of security officer Mark Peters, killed in a road accident.
	Finally, I add my personal thanks to the offices of the Leader of the House and the Chief Whips for making my life as a Convenor not only tolerable but also enjoyable. Last of all, I wish a happy Christmas and New Year to all the staff of this House.
	House adjourned at eight minutes past five o'clock until Monday 10 January at half-past two o'clock.